Carney needs to rein in his spending and follow one simple rule: Only spend what you promised. Don’t go over budget;
You’d think the former banker would be better at watching the government’s bank account.
But in only about seven months, Prime Minister Mark Carney already managed to go over budget, twice.
Carney released his budget back in November. He said he was going to spend $588 billion in 2026.
Then he released the Spring Economic Update at the end of April. He hiked spending to about $595 billion. That means Carney was already overbudget by more than $6 billion.
A little over one month later, Carney is another $6 billion over budget compared to his spring update, according to a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Carney’s campaign platform said that “the federal government has been spending too much.”
Going over budget twice in one year is the opposite of fixing that problem. And that’s going over budget on a plan that projected Carney spending $21 billion more than former prime minister Justin Trudeau planned to spend in 2026.
Carney gave himself an open net and still managed to miss. Twice.
Going over budget also wiped out the savings that Carney is claiming will materialize from his “comprehensive expenditure review.” Carney’s budget said that the spending review would rein in government spending and save “$13 billion annually by 2028-29.” Carney already spent about $12 billion over budget this year.
The budget isn’t supposed to be a suggestion. The budget is supposed to be a serious promise to taxpayers about how much the government will spend. It’s a document that the government should follow to the letter.
When spending is spiralling out of control by going over budget, the government’s borrowing spirals out of control too. And that costs taxpayers.
The federal government’s Spring Economic Update said it would borrow $65 billion this year. The PBO projects the government will borrow $72 billion this year.
More borrowing means more money wasted on debt interest charges. Debt interest charges will cost taxpayers $59 billion this year. That works out to about $1,400 a person. That’s more than the federal government will send to the provinces in health transfers ($57 billion) or collect through the GST ($53 billion).
Debt interest charges per person will increase to $1,885 by 2030, according to the PBO. That’s because the government has no plan to stop borrowing and adding to the debt. The government will still borrow $58 billion in 2030.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of going over budget twice in one year Carney, needs to cut wasteful spending to reduce government borrowing.
He can start with the obvious stuff. He can stop gouging taxpayers to pay for airplane food. Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for Carney to spend almost $200,000 on gourmet in-flight catering for just three trips. Next Carney can force the finance minister to use his in-house speechwriter to write his budget speech instead of contracting it out for $12,000. Or, better yet, he could write his own speech.
Then there are the big-ticket items. Carney can scrap his gun confiscation program that law-enforcement experts say won’t make Canadians safer and save at least $742 million. And then he can tackle cutting the massive bureaucracy that has increased in cost by 80 per cent over the last 10 years.
Bringing the cost of the bureaucracy back to 2019 levels adjusted for inflation would save taxpayers almost $18 billion.
Taxpayers can’t afford to pay $1,400 every year to cover the government’s debt interest charges because the government’s going over budget on its own spending targets every year. Carney needs to rein in his spending and follow one simple rule: Only spend what you promised. Don’t go over budget.
