Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada presented a budget update on Tuesday showing that his government\u2019s deficit would be less than projected last fall and that the country\u2019s economy would most likely grow over the coming year despite several key industries being buffeted by President Trump\u2019s tariffs.<\/p>\n
The spring economic update, a mini budget of sorts, came exactly one year after Mr. Carney returned the Liberal Party to power<\/a> in his first political campaign and a few weeks after special elections and defections to the Liberals by members of other parties gave him a majority<\/a> and the voting control of Parliament he had been denied in that election.<\/p>\n But if Mr. Carney intends to use his newfound political control to change direction, there was no indication. Instead, the update underscored his broad push to reduce Canada\u2019s economic dependence on the United States by expanding trade with other countries and cutting government spending in some areas to expand military spending and large infrastructure projects like pipelines and nuclear power reactors.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world has been more uncertain than ever, but despite that, the Canadian economy has been resilient,\u201d Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne, the finance minister, told reporters on Tuesday. \u201cWe\u2019re definitely entering a new world order.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Carney, the former central banker of Canada and England, was an investment executive until he moved into politics last year. At that time, the Conservatives seemed certain to win the election to come. Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader at the time, had become unpopular after more than nine years in office, and his government was seen as profligate by many voters.<\/p>\n But Mr. Carney\u2019s background in finance reversed the party\u2019s fortunes when voters appeared to be searching for stability in the midst of Mr. Trump\u2019s trade war on Canada and his calls to turn the country into the 51st U.S. state.<\/p>\n Since then, Mr. Carney has, publicly at least, appeared to largely operate as his own finance minister. He again upstaged Mr. Champagne this week by announcing the only major change to be found in the update. On Monday, Mr. Carney said that Canada would set up a sovereign wealth fund<\/a> like those found in Norway and several oil-rich nations in the Middle East. While the fund of 26 billion Canadian dollars, about $19 billion, is considerably smaller than those other countries\u2019 pools of money, Canadians will be able to invest their own money in Canada\u2019s new projects.<\/p>\n The update clarified that the 26 billion Canadian dollars will be pulled out of the government\u2019s general revenues over the next three years.<\/p>\n The only other significant measure outlined in the update was a plan to spend 2 billion Canadian dollars, or $1.5 billion, to train 80,000 to 100,000 people in skilled construction jobs, and an additional 3.4 billion Canadian dollars, or about $2.5 billion, to fund apprenticeships.<\/p>\n That program follows similar efforts by the federal government and provinces going back several years to deal with Canada\u2019s chronic shortage of construction workers.<\/p>\n Mr. Champagne said that previous efforts had been fragmented but that the new program would be more comprehensive.<\/p>\n \u201cHow many people know all these programs and all these agencies?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The document also forecast that, despite declines in the jobs-heavy automotive, steel, aluminum and forestry industries brought on by American tariffs, the economy would grow by 2 percent this year. Last year, it reached 1.7 percent after falling by 0.6 percent in the final three months.<\/p>\n The government said that it now expected the deficit for the current fiscal year, which began this month, to be 67 billion Canadian dollars, 11 billion dollars less than it had anticipated in the November budget.<\/p>\n While the recent spike in oil prices is being felt by Canadian motorists, air travelers and many industries, it is benefiting Canada\u2019s oil industry and increasing tax revenues as well as employment in that sector. Overall, the government now expects its revenues to be 9 billion Canadian dollars higher than forecast in part because fewer people are likely to lose their jobs.<\/p>\n In the months since November\u2019s budget<\/a>, it remains unclear exactly what jobs and programs will be lost to budget cuts. And the government has introduced a variety of new spending measures like the investment fund and a temporary removal of a federal tax<\/a> on gasoline and diesel fuel to partly offset the recent price hikes.<\/p>\n Mr. Champagne repeatedly said that the deficit remained low relative to other industrialized nations and that the government was \u201cfiscally prudent\u201d and careful where it cut.<\/p>\n \u201cBy spending less, we can invest more in the things that really matter to Canadians,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada presented a budget update on Tuesday showing that his government\u2019s deficit would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13421,2726,13083,13423,6238,8,13082,4689,13425,13422,13084,9,10867,13081,7,13424,1071,13,6237],"class_list":{"0":"post-22096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-budgets-and-budgeting","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-carney","11":"tag-conservative-party-canada","12":"tag-donald-j","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-infrastructure-public-works","15":"tag-international-relations","16":"tag-justin","17":"tag-liberal-party-canada","18":"tag-mark-j","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-politics-and-government","21":"tag-sovereign-wealth-funds","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-trudeau","24":"tag-trump","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-united-states-international-relations"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116487900542078532","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}