A Throne Speech fit for a king. But where’s the budget?

Published in The Globe and Mail.

The Speech from the Throne delivered by King Charles III on Tuesday will be remembered as an anomaly, and not just because of the speaker.

Here’s how it usually goes: A Throne Speech opens a legislative session, laying out the government’s priorities. Then, at the start of that legislative session, the government presents a budget to provide key fiscal context for its priorities.

The annual budget is the cornerstone of the government’s financial and economic management. It provides the big picture within which specific choices – notably the spending MPs must approve in the estimates – should fit. Without a budget, Canadians cannot properly assess the legislative priorities, including the cuts to personal income taxes and the GST specifically mentioned in the Throne Speech.

But the government, instead of committing to delivering a budget at the start of the legislative session, has delayed it until the fall. The budget could be up to half a year away. It is highly unusual for a Throne Speech to not be followed by a budget for so long.

It does not have to be this way. Or, at least, the government still has time to fix it.

Ottawa had previously decided to not even present a budget this year. The federal government’s turnabout to deliver a 2025 budget is good news – but not good enough. While better than no budget at all, a budget so late in the year is an affront to fiscal accountability, and a snub to parliamentarians and the Canadians who elected them. The message the government now needs to hear is that a spring budget is still possible, and that it should deliver one.

Budgets tell MPs and Canadians how much money the government plans to raise and how the government will raise it. They say how much the government will spend, and how the government will spend it

The federal fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31. Governments ideally present budgets in January or February, well before the fiscal year has started. Presenting after the fiscal year has begun means that the government is already raising and spending without proper scrutiny. But presenting a budget while the House of Commons is sitting – prior to June 20 – would be far better than waiting until the fall when the fiscal numbers will be less plan than fait accompli.

It is almost half a year since the 2024 fall economic statement. With the new government moving to implement the tax and spending promises from the election campaign and Throne Speech, Parliament and the public need an up-to-date fiscal plan before billions of dollars in new measures are rolled out.

Canada’s fraught economic situation – chronic low investment and productivity growth, geopolitical risks, and a protracted trade war with the United States – makes a spring budget all the more desirable.

U.S. fiscal profligacy is pushing interest rates up internationally. An information vacuum that adds to uncertainty about Canadian finances helps no one and will raise alarm among the country’s credit rating agencies, which have recently downgraded the scores of two large provinces – Quebec and British Columbia.

A late budget would also exacerbate a worrying trend. In the past three decades, the federal government has tabled budgets after the start of the fiscal year only five times. Four of those late budgets appeared since 2015. In 2020, for the first time ever, the federal government failed to produce a budget at all. Defenders of this sidelining of legislative oversight often point out that Parliament must still approve the estimates – the documents that outline a detailed spending plan, which require specific legislative approval.

But the dominance of statutory programs such as seniors’ benefits, federal-provincial transfers and interest on Ottawa’s growing debt in federal expenses means the estimates cover a relatively small share of the budget. And when the relevant parliamentary committees fail to review their estimates by a May 31 deadline – as happened in the case of 10 committees charged with reviewing $25-billion in federal outlays in 2024 – the estimates are deemed approved.

To those who say the recent federal election is an excuse for a late budget, we have a straightforward reply. It is not. If the previous government had taken timeliness more seriously, we would have had a budget before the election.

The Ontario government, notwithstanding the same fraught environment and its own election, has produced its 2025 budget. The federal election in 2011 occurred on May 2 and that new government produced a budget on June 6. There is no excuse for delay.

A fiscal plan produced in a hurry might even be better. Another adverse trend in recent federal budgets has been bloat: hundreds of pages of self-congratulatory spin, condescending narrative and repetition of previous announcements, which buried the key numbers where only experts could find them.

Time pressure could give us something short and to the point: projections for revenues, expenses, the bottom line and the resulting change in the debt right up front, where anyone – including parliamentarians and voters – can find and understand them.

The spring window is still open. The government has a chance to correct course for the benefit of Parliament and the public. It should take it.