{"id":74434,"date":"2026-06-04T15:13:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/74434\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T15:13:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:13:20","slug":"budget-watchdog-forecasts-deeper-deficits-than-ottawa-projected-in-spring-update-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/74434\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget watchdog forecasts deeper deficits than Ottawa projected in spring update"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Parliamentary Parliamentary Budget Officer Annette Ryan adjusts the microphone as she waits to appears before the Standing Committee on Finance in Ottawa on Monday, March 23, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Adrian Wyld – The Canadian Press \u00b7 The Canadian Press <\/p>\n

OTTAWA \u2014 The federal government’s budget watchdog says Ottawa has less than a one per cent chance of maintaining the key fiscal anchor of shrinking the deficit as a share of the economy every year.<\/p>\n

Parliamentary Budget Officer Annette Ryan today released her office’s first economic and fiscal update since she assumed the role in April.<\/p>\n

The budget watchdog predicts annual deficits will average $4.6 billion higher than Ottawa projected in its spring economic update.<\/p>\n

The budget office expects the deficit for this fiscal year will edge down slightly to $71.8 billion \u2014 about $6.5 billion higher than Ottawa’s spring projection.<\/p>\n

Ryan argues that annual deficits will be deeper than Ottawa expects, mainly because of lower income tax revenue and higher program expenses.<\/p>\n

While the forecast does see the federal government’s deficit-to-GDP ratio falling over the five-year horizon, the report estimates the odds of Ottawa showing a decline in the deficit every year at less than one per cent.<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2026.<\/p>\n

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Parliamentary Budget Officer Annette Ryan adjusts the microphone as she waits to appears before the Standing Committee on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14862,61,20153,989,12309],"class_list":["post-74434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-annette-ryan","tag-ottawa","tag-standing-committee-on-finance","tag-the-canadian-press","tag-watchdog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}