Graphic Intelligence

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Federal Spending Keeps Soaring with Each Fall Statement

Successive fiscal updates from the federal Minister of Finance since 2019 show projected federal spending growing by leaps and bounds, even after COVID-related measures drop out of the projections. The government’s last pre-COVID projections, in its 2019 fall economic statement, showed federal spending of $421 billion in the 2024/25 fiscal year, the last year in the projections.

Ottawa produced no budget in 2020, an unprecedented failure, but the 2020 fall statement showed 2024/25 spending at $429 billion in 2024/25 – 2 percent higher than the 2019 projections. The 2021 fall statement showed spending at $465 billion in 2024/25 – 11 percent higher than in 2019. Meanwhile, the fall 2022 statement presented last month showed spending at $505 billion in 2024/25 – up 20 percent since the 2019 projection. Not because of COVID.

Everything else – transfers to every type of recipient, wages and pensions of federal employees, interest payments on the government’s ballooning debt – is up. About one-third of the higher amount now projected for 2024/25 is due to higher prices, but the federal government’s relentless spending is a key driver of inflation. Fiscal projections that turn out to be fiction are an insult. It should not take a recession or financial crisis to reveal that spending more on everything leads nowhere good.

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