Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday morning in Rome that his Liberal government will table a budget this fall — a decision he argued is the right one because there’s “not much value” in rushing out a budget at the earliest opportunity.
“We will have a much more comprehensive, effective, ambitious, prudent budget in the fall,” Carney said at a media conference in Rome, where world leaders have gathered to commemorate Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass.
“You do these things right and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The Liberals have faced sharp criticism from their opponents since Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said on Wednesday that the Liberals would not table a budget this spring and instead present a “substantive” fall economic statement, which is like a mini-budget.
Carney defended his government waiting until the fall to table a budget and argued “there’s not much value in trying to rush through a budget in a very narrow window — three weeks — with a new cabinet [and] effectively a new finance minister.”
The House of Commons is set to return on May 26 and is expected to rise on June 20, meaning the federal government would have less than a month to pass a budget if it wanted to do so before MPs return in mid-September.
Carney said in the short-term, his government would focus on dismantling interprovincial trade barriers and pass legislation to implement a promised “middle-class tax cut.”
It typically takes months to craft a federal budget, a document drawn up after broad consultations — although some of that work was already underway before Carney took over the party.
Still, it’s been nearly 400 days since the federal government presented a budget, an inordinately long time.
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s team did present a fiscal update in late December — a document that showed the finances were much worse than expected — but it was largely overshadowed by Chrystia Freeland’s dramatic resignation as finance minister and deputy prime minister just hours before it was due to be tabled.
Carney on the price of homes
The prime minister was also asked by reporters whether he wants house prices to go down in Canada.
Earlier this week, new Housing Minister Gregor Robertson said the best way to tackle the real estate crisis is to increase supply, not reduce costs.
“I think that we need to deliver more supply, make sure the market is stable,” Robertson said to journalists as he headed into his first cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “It’s a huge part of our economy, but we need to be able to deliver more affordable housing.”
Canada’s new housing minister is a familiar face to British Columbians. As Justin McElroy explains, Gregor Robertson’s record on housing is in the spotlight as he moves from ex-mayor to federal minister.
Carney, similar to Robertson, said he wants “house prices to be more affordable to Canadians,” something the federal government aims to do through cutting the GST on new homes, urging municipalities to cut development charges and developing a more efficient homebuilding industry in Canada.
The prime minister also said on Sunday that those measures would lower the cost of homes built over the next five years and those savings would be passed on to buyers.
“That amount of activity is not enough necessarily to affect the overall level of house prices. It does affect those types of homes and people who can buy those types of homes,” Carney added.
