Despite having yet to table a federal budget, Prime Minister Mark Carney released an estimated spending plan totalling $486.9 billion, which the Conservatives plan to vote down, saying it will further fuel inflation.
The federal treasury board announced that Carney’s spending plans for the fiscal year of 2025-26 will cost Canadians nearly half a trillion dollars. His plan includes an 8 per cent increase in spending from Trudeau’s last year in Parliament.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced his party would vote in favour of any bill that improves the lives of Canadians but will vote against Carney’s plan to further balloon the size of government.
“We ran on a platform of fiscal discipline to bring down the cost of government so that we could bring down the cost of living,” Poilievre said in Ottawa. “But this week, Mark Carney introduced half a trillion dollars of spending with no budget, the first time that has happened in decades.”
Poilievre said the majority of Carney’s spending will go towards an ever-increasing bloated bureaucracy, adding more consultants and contractors—a departure from Carney’s campaign promise to cut spending but increase investment.
He said the proposed ballooned bureaucracy will go up by six per cent, more than double the combined rate of inflation and population growth. The plan includes increasing annual spending on consultants by more than 37 per cent to $26 billion per year, meaning the average Canadian family will spend approximately $1,400 per year on the federal government.
“It’s clear that Mark Carney is even more expensive than Justin Trudeau,” Poilievre said. “This half-trillion-dollar spending bill will drive up inflation interest rates above and beyond what they would otherwise be, at a time when we’ve got a record increase in people who are unable to pay their bills.”
Poilievre renewed calls for Carney to release a spring budget, adding that Carney repeatedly claimed he had a plan on the campaign trail but has failed to disclose it.
“There’s often a difference between what liberals advertise and what they do,” he said.
Poilievre said Conservatives will vote in favour of any plan that reduces the size of government gatekeepers and eliminates key Liberal policies that hinder economic growth.
“We need to repeal Bills C-69 (no-new-pipelines) and C-48 (moratorium on large-scale oil tanker shipping), the energy cap, the electric vehicle mandate,” he said. “And unlock the incredible power of our resources to build powerful paychecks and, most importantly, to make us independent and self-reliant from the Americans.