A Masterclass in Alchemy: How Mark Carney’s Budget 2025 Turns Your Tax Dollars Into Thin, Hopeless Air… No, the Carney Budget will not work. It is a capitulation, not a cure.

Budget 2025 (2025/11/04) (Full document) refers,

Is Budget 2025 enough to reverse Canada’s economic decline?

The federal government’s latest budget describes the economic challenge we face in stark terms. It states: “The world is undergoing a series of fundamental shifts at a speed, scale, and scope not seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

In response, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne says their fiscal plan will “make generational investments” to “supercharge growth.”

But does it?

A Masterclass in Alchemy: How Mark Carney’s Budget 2025 Turns Your Tax Dollars Into Thin, Hopeless Air

By Eddie Hardie, Sociopolitical Commentator  @  Canuck🍁Post

Let us not mince words. To call the recently unveiled Budget 2025 a “plan to reverse Canada’s economic decline” is not merely an exaggeration—it is a fantasy of such breathtaking scope that it belongs on a shelf next to Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The chorus of pundits asking, “Is it enough?” is missing the point entirely. The real question is: Is it even a budget, or just a $50-billion performance art piece on governmental delusion?

Spare a thought for the beleaguered Canadian taxpayer, watching this spectacle from a country where the average price of a home has become a punchline and a trip to the grocery store requires a second mortgage. We were promised a saviour, a economic messiah from the hallowed halls of international finance. Instead, we’ve been handed a document so profoundly useless, so hopelessly out of touch, that it can only be described as a firehose of cash aimed at a structural inferno.

No, the Carney Budget will not work. It is a capitulation, not a cure.

With nearly $80B in red ink, Carney racks up largest ever non-pandemic deficit in federal budget

1. The Great Green Gambit: Pouring Billions on a Sinking Ship

The centrepiece of this budget is, of course, the eye-watering sum of money dedicated to “green industrial policy.” We are told this will create the “jobs of tomorrow.” A lovely sentiment. But what about the jobs of today? What about the industries that pay the bills now?

This isn’t a strategy; it’s a satirical sketch. It’s like a chef, upon discovering his kitchen is on fire, deciding to bake a magnificent, award-winning soufflé for the year 2035, while ignoring the flames licking at his apron. The government is attempting to build a gleaming, solar-powered treehouse in the sky while the foundation of the national house—productivity, investment, and fiscal sanity—is rotting away beneath us.

Canada’s business investment per worker is a national embarrassment. A 2023 report from the Fraser Institute highlighted that from 2014 to 2021, business investment per worker in Canada was a staggering 57% lower than in the United States. Does Budget 2025 seriously address the regulatory morass and tax hostility that drives capital south of the border? No. It simply throws more public money at the problem, hoping to substitute government spending for the private investment it has systematically scared away.

Source: Fraser Institute – Canada’s Business Investment Per Worker Falls Far Behind the U.S.

2. The Hydra of New Bureaucracy: Every Dollar Spawns a Committee

The budget is riddled with new grants, councils, and “innovation funds.” This is not stimulus; it is the creation of a self-licking ice cream cone. A massive, permanent bureaucracy will be required to administer these programs, consuming a significant portion of the funds in salaries, reports, and consultations that lead nowhere.

The money isn’t being invested; it’s being processed. It’s a transfer of wealth from the productive sector of the economy to the administrative state. Instead of allowing entrepreneurs and businesses to keep their capital and create real growth, the government confiscates it, takes a hefty cut for its “handling fee,” and dribbles the remainder back out with strings attached. It is the most inefficient, soul-crushing form of economic development ever devised.

What they should be looking at: A ruthless, prudent fiscal policy. This means:

• Not wasting money on corporate welfare disguised as green subsidies. If a project isn’t economically viable without perpetual government life support, it is not a good project.

• Slashing the regulatory burden that can delay major projects for a decade or more. The cost of this red tape is measured in lost jobs, foregone investment, and missed opportunities.

• Committing to a path of balanced budgets to restore confidence and stop the dangerous accumulation of public debt. Canada’s total government net debt is now projected to reach $2.8 trillion by 2025-26.

Source: Government of Canada – 2024 Fall Economic Statement – Debt Management Strategy (See Annex 3)

The most egregious jargon of Carney’s budget, from ‘rightsizing’ to ‘fiscal firepower’

‘Rightsizing,’ ‘supercharging’ and the world premiere of ‘productivity super-deduction’

Why This is a Catastrophe for Canadians

This isn’t just a political disagreement. This is a direct assault on your future.

• For Young Canadians: The debt being accumulated today is a mortgage on their future, with no asset to show for it. Their taxes will be higher, their public services will be strained to pay the interest on this debt, and their dream of affordable home ownership recedes further into the distance with every new dollar of inflationary spending.

• For Seniors and Savers: The government’s spending spree, funded by the Bank of Canada’s accommodative stance, is a recipe for the return of inflation. It erodes the purchasing power of fixed incomes and savings, silently taxing those who played by the rules.

• For Every Working Person: As capital flees and productivity stagnates, so do wages. Canada’s standard of living is in decline relative to our peers. This budget does nothing to reverse that; it accelerates it by misallocating resources on a colossal scale.

The comment blaming the “incompetent Carney Administration” is correct in its diagnosis of failure, but wrong in its timing. The incompetence is not in the past; it is unfolding before our eyes, codified in the pages of Budget 2025. It is a budget of beautiful lies, promising a future it is structurally incapable of delivering.

It is not just insufficient. It is a active agent of decline. It is, in a word, hopeless.