Last week’s federal budget continues the upward drift in federal spending, a trend the C.D. Howe Institute consistently documents. Since 2021, each successive fall update (since 2025, budgets have been released in the fall and updates in the spring) has projected higher total expenses than the one before it. The 2021 Update projected total spending of $494 billion for 2026/27. Budget 2026 now raises that figure by $108 billion, to $603 billion, averaging more than $20 billion in upward revisions annually over five years. Greater discipline in sticking to spending plans, even if only by reducing overruns by two-thirds, would have eliminated the deficit in Budget 2026.
For more analysis on the federal 2026 budget, see here.
