Carney, Budgets, And A Rocky Week

Reflections On This Week

I think it’s fair to say the list of people who have great weeks is pretty slim right now.

I certainly haven’t, very publicly crashing out about Gregor Robertson’s appointment as Housing Minister and the firing of Nate Erskine-Smith amongst other things. I don’t think Carney has, as his Cabinet throws up issues and the decision to delay a budget goes over badly. Gregor and Guilbeault have made problems for the government already with bad quotes, and instead of taking advantage of any of it Pierre Poilievre is focusing on attacking Dom LeBlanc because Poilievre (or, more likely his Anglo staffer) misunderstood Dom’s French.

The press are covering themselves in fucking glory, whether it’s by amplifying the dumber claims about what the No Budget decision actually means or by completely overstating the case on how many retaliatory tariffs actually got rescinded (spoiler: not that many). Elections Canada are deservedly in the crosshairs for their fuckups covered yesterday, and the NDP has 3/7ths of their caucus opposed to Don Davies being their interim leader. I guess Tim Hodgson had a good week, but outside of him it’s a slim list.

The Budget decision is an interesting one - as a matter of democratic accountability the tabling or not of a budget is functionally an irrelevance. What most Canadians think a budget does - funding the Government - is done by the Estimates process. Budgets are a speech, and Budget Implementation Bills are just that - bills designed to enact regulatory changes that were enumerated in the budget. You don’t need a Budget to, say, boost CBC funding another $150M, but you need some form of enabling legislation to cut the bottom tax rate.

The reason you don’t need a Budget to boost CBC funding is that Parliament votes for departmental funding separately. The Government will put together its spending asks and the House will either vote for them or vote against them. If they vote for them, they’ll pass, and the House will exist. If they vote no, the Government will fall. The Estimates process works, and will enable a full airing of spending priorities and Opposition objections.

If the House wants to insist that the Government table updated fiscal baselines before voting for Supply, they can, and should, if that’s what they want. But the decision to not table a budget and give a mini-budget with the Fall Economic Statement is not a legal out to avoid confidence votes or accountability. Also, there’s a Throne Speech coming, the Opposition can vote the Government down if they want then. (They don’t want to, but, you know, in theory.)

(To preempt the inevitable “if the Opposition can get the growth and deficit figures tabled anyways why not just do a budget?” question, people treat budget numbers differently. If the Finance Minister is off by $10B/year on the deficit it’s a national story. If some PBO report with more caveats than pages is wrong, it’s lucky to be on A15 of the Post. Is that dumb? Sure. Is it reality? Also yes.)

The decision to delay is a political one with political arguments on both sides. If you table one, you run the very real risks of an incoherent and useless document that’s been thrown together at the last minute and isn’t particularly robust in terms of modelling, assumptions, or have much utility. You’d be giving the country numbers that could be right, but actually bear little resemblance to likeliest outcomes. The chances of having to wildly downgrade growth expectations, raise deficit projections, and generally look like an ass in the fall is real. The case for doing it is you command the bully pulpit for a day, but with Poilievre looking like the dweeb outside the party desperate to get in, you get the bully pulpit every day.

Does any of this make the Gregor of it all any better? No, but it’s not worth burning what influence I have screaming into the sun about the decision. We have a Housing Minister, let’s drag him to the positions we need him to take. We did it with Bonnie, we got Marc Miller’s bleeding heart to support massie restrictions on immigration, we can do it again. It’ll be fine, if only because it has to be or we’re gonna lose.

I’m not happy with Carney’s week, and I will use my platform to be an effective voice for liberalism and pragmatic progressivism throughout, but it’s certainly the case that being pissed about this week doesn’t change the facts of Carney. Hilariously, I wouldn’t say I learned anything about Carney I didn’t already know - to the extent we learned anything it’s that he needs to show his work more, and show the country both what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, instead of assuming people just get it. If we’re not tabling a budget, Carney should be announcing - and explaining - that fact, and explaining why. We trusted Canadians to get complicated concepts around COVID and around tariffs but now don’t feel like they deserve explanations? It’s fucking annoying that we don’t trust they’ll get a reasonable answer.

Gregor Robertson’s answer on house prices, by the way, should be reasonable too - “we need to find the right balance between protecting existing homeowners, especially those who have bought in recent years, and working to create a fairer market for the next generations. We will work diligently to achieve the best outcomes for all Canadians. That said, we need to solve this housing crisis, while making sure we don’t create a different housing crisis in trying to solve this one.” Say that every time you get asked about the issue of prices, Gregor, and you’ll buy yourself like 4 months to come up with a solution that doesn’t fuck people who are currently or potentially underwater while gradually lowering prices of market housing. Trust Canadians and they’ll come through.

It’s hard to be optimistic after a week like this, sure. I run hot and when I don’t like something I make that exceedingly clear. This week has put me in a shitty fucking mood because I’m pissed at my PM and I’m going to be every time I am reminded who our Housing Minister is - or, far more accurately, is not - for a while. Intellectually I’m over it, emotionally I’m not, and if this site is going to have any value I have to show me running hot.

But I also need to be honest in saying this week won’t matter. The decision to fire Nate and hire Gregor might matter, maybe, but what dumb shit Guilbeault said won’t matter. Whether we get facsimiles of Northern Gateway or Energy East will hinge far far more on whether the private sector has a proprietor for those projects than what the Minister for Canadian Identity thinks. Anita Anand expressing factual statements about the Middle East is not a failure, nor does anyone in this country except the true political tragics know who Wayne Long is still. The next election will be won or lost on whether costs are up or down, whether there are more jobs or fewer, and whether public services are better or worse. No comments this week matter for answering those questions.

The idea that we need to be deferential to Carney, as if his victory in the campaign is enough to make blatantly bad decisions somehow make more sense than they do, is nonsense, and something I will push back against with everything I have. But it’s easy to fire off criticism and easier still to take victory laps. But those aren’t going to be helpful, and I’m not sure it’s what we need from people like me right now. Being helpful is better than being an asshole, even if it is my professional obligation.

I know, I’m just as shocked as you.

(As I continue this journey of what this site can and should be now that Carney’s won, consider a paid subscription. All my work will remain free, but the work doesn’t stop.)