Federal budget to usher in new spending amid revenue windfall, election
Canada’s next budget will look very familiar, with Justin Trudeau set to spend much of a revenue windfall and continued red ink in his government’s books.
“This is an election budget, it’s safe to say,” Goldy Hyder, president of the Business Council of Canada, said in an interview. The lobby group, which represents chief executives at the country’s top firms, has issued a warning about about fading competitiveness, but Hyder’s expectations are low for any major measures there or on trimming the deficit. “We should have been saving, and paying down debt and deficit, during the good times,” Hyder said.
Despite that windfall, there’s more red ink than Trudeau pledged to voters the first time around. The prime minister won power in 2015 on a platform that forecast a return to balance by now. The opposition Conservative Party regularly attacks him over the scale of his deficits, though they remain modest by global standards at 0.8 per cent of gross domestic product.
That could include a move to make permanent a visa fast-track program for highly skilled workers, which cut processing time to two weeks from months-long waits previously, another business group said. “We’re very optimistic that that program will be made permanent in this year’s budget,” said Benjamin Bergen, executive director of the Council of Canadian Innovators, representing tech firms.
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