By Samuel Rasmussen
The slogan is so solemn it becomes comic: “Building a Strong Canada.”
That’s the rallying cry of the Carney–Trudeau government — though it’s no longer clear which of the two is actually driving the truck.
Under the banner of “resilience,” “sovereignty,” and “historic investments,” the 2025 budget reads like a national epic. In truth, it’s a manifesto of economic dirigisme, a handbook of bureaucratic engineering wrapped in patriotic packaging.
Reading it, one might think Canada is about to build pyramids — on credit, of course — just to prove its strength to an ungrateful world.
The New Liturgy of a Strong Canada
Right from the foreword, the tone is set. The State fancies itself History incarnate:
“We are not facing a transition, but a historic shift.”
What the text calls “a historic shift,” a sober economist would call the consequence of twenty years of interventionist policies and cheerful overspending.
But in the Gospel according to Carney, everything becomes virtue: crises are opportunities, deficits are investments, and fiscal restraint is courage.
This “new era of leadership” has nothing to do with entrepreneurial risk or free exchange; it’s the triumphant return of industrial policy.
Ottawa proudly notes that in 2024 alone, over 2,500 such measures were adopted worldwide.
And, as always, when the world doubles down on protectionism, Canada rushes to copy the worst.
Carney, the Man Who Loved to Plan
Mark Carney has never been a liberal economist. He’s a central banker turned priest of planned virtue.
He preaches that “structural public investment” can replace real productivity.
Under his watch, “innovation” and “entrepreneurship” now mean tax credits, super-deductions, and targeted subsidies. In other words: crony capitalism in a three-piece suit.
Take the super-deduction for productivity. It’s presented as fiscal sorcery:
“Fostering productivity and competitiveness.”
In practice, it’s just another accounting trick allowing politically connected firms to reclaim what was taxed from them the day before.
Meanwhile, small and medium businesses — the ones without lobbyists or tax strategists — are left to fund the megaprojects baptized Homes Canada, The National Projects Bureau, and The Defense Investment Agency.
We haven’t seen so many new committees since the Soviets were planning wheat quotas.
The Schizophrenia of “Fiscal Discipline”
“Spend less to invest more,” proclaims the document — a masterpiece of budgetary doublethink.
In the same paragraph, Ottawa promises to “reduce government size,” “modernize the public service,” and “invest 280 billion over five years.”
In plain English: we’ll save by borrowing more.
The budget calls itself “responsible” while forecasting a 78-billion-dollar deficit in 2025–2026 and 65 billion the following year.
But those deficits, we’re told, are good deficits — because they fund the future.
Debt is no longer a burden; it’s an asset.
By that logic, a household maxing out its credit card should call itself “intergenerationally resilient.”
This is the laziest kind of Keynesianism — the sort true liberals have refuted for decades.
Prosperity doesn’t come from government spreadsheets. It comes from work, innovation, and freedom — all of which this budget smothers under committees and slogans.
State Capitalism in Evening Wear
The 400-page budget is an ode to replacing civil society with bureaucracy.
Canada is no longer a federation of provinces and free enterprises — it’s a 40-million-person start-up whose CEO is the State.
Everything is nationalized in spirit: housing, defense, youth, culture, gender equality, ports, AI, critical minerals.
Each domain gets its “strategy” and its “fund.”
The economy is no longer a living organism — it’s an org chart.
The word investment appears hundreds of times; the word market barely at all.
Free enterprise is replaced by the “integrated approach.”
And of course, “clean transition” — the endless subsidy hole of our time — becomes the core of productivity.
Carney promises a “clean energy superpower.” There’s just one detail: no one yet knows how to make hydrogen cheap.
The Builder State: From Myth to Megalomania
The budget speaks lyrically of “national projects that will unite our regions.”
You can feel the nostalgia for 19th-century Canada — the age of railways and the Trans-Canada Highway.
But unlike then, the State has no gold left to build with — only credit.
The minister even compares today’s “mobilization” to the 1940s and 1990s:
“Just as Canadians once rose to defend freedom… we must now rise to build the country.”
Equating a stimulus plan with fighting fascism or restoring fiscal balance is theatre, not leadership.
It’s confusing courage with credit limits.
The Myth of the Protected Middle Class
Another gem:
“Reducing taxes for the middle class and eliminating carbon pricing for consumers.”
The kind of promise that evaporates faster than ethanol.
Ottawa cancels a carbon tax only to reimpose its cost through hidden fees, regulatory quotas, and green subsidies.
Carbon won’t be taxed anymore — it’ll be administered.
And the economy will still suffocate, now under the name of climate competitiveness.
As for the tax cut for “22 million Canadians,” it’s financed by chronic deficits the same taxpayers will repay later through inflation, stagnating wages, and higher interest rates.
The Left loves cutting taxes it will re-raise through debt.
Housing: The New Federal Religion
The Homes Canada chapter reads like paternalist gospel.
Ottawa pledges to build between 430,000 and 480,000 homes per year — twice the current market capacity.
But governments don’t build homes; they build programs.
They speak of “attracting private capital,” but what they mean is command, control, and regulation.
This isn’t partnership — it’s polite socialism.
And because imagination knows no limits, Homes Canada promises to cut construction costs by 20 % and timelines by 50 % through “advanced modular methods.”
Apparently, PowerPoint is the new bulldozer.
Sovereignty as a Universal Excuse
“Sovereignty” appears throughout the text like an incantation.
It justifies everything: industrial policy, censorship, spending.
“Defending our sovereignty through historic investments in defense, security, and capabilities.”
Translation: 30 billion dollars for an army still short on helicopters, plus a “Defense Investment Agency.”
Combining military vocabulary with venture capital jargon takes real creativity.
Soon we’ll hear about “operational ROI on patriotism.”
Worse, this warlike rhetoric comes with a moral crusade: protecting culture, funding CBC/Radio-Canada, financing gender equality, and celebrating “Canadian values.”
It’s the same old subsidized virtue — wrapped in maple-leaf nationalism.
Strong Canada, Dependent Economy
Behind the grand speeches lies pure contradiction.
The government preaches “energy independence” while strangling domestic oil with regulation.
It praises “global markets” while resurrecting a “Buy Canadian” policy:
“Public funds will be used to strengthen Canadian supply chains.”
Protectionism disguised as patriotism.
Yet history is clear: no country ever prospered by closing its borders.
Nations grow rich by trading freely, not by building tariff walls and coordination agencies.
This fantasy of becoming “our own best customer” betrays an ignorance of basic economics.
A country doesn’t feed itself; it exchanges.
To call self-sufficiency a 21st-century virtue is like bragging you turned off your Wi-Fi to improve your digital future.
The Cult of Debt
The 2025 budget is a lesson in fiscal theology.
The debt-to-GDP ratio has become a totem: 13.3 %, “the lowest in the G7.”
They forget to mention that the number excludes provincial debt, unfunded liabilities, and future promises.
Add those in, and Canada is among the most indebted countries per capita in the developed world.
But the illusion works.
We can keep borrowing, “investing,” and congratulating ourselves for “discipline.”
The liberals of the 1990s would have found this grotesque.
Today, it’s mainstream.
Deficit is now a brand identity.
When the State Thinks It’s a Start-Up
Perhaps the most absurd passage:
“A leaner, more productive public service through large-scale adoption of artificial intelligence.”
You almost have to admire the audacity.
A bureaucracy bloated by 30 % since 2019 now promises reform through AI.
That’s like an alcoholic declaring sobriety by distilling his own whiskey.
Carney has understood one thing: to justify expansion, the State must look innovative.
We no longer have bureaucrats — we have talent.
We no longer give subsidies — we make human-capital investments.
Socialism 3.0 now speaks the language of tech.
The Virtue Illusion
The text proudly quotes IMF director Kristalina Georgieva praising “Canada’s sound choices.”
The irony? The IMF spent two decades warning countries against exactly this type of interventionist drift.
But in Carney-Trudeau’s moral economy, everything inverts: debt becomes prudence, spending becomes responsibility, and planning becomes innovation.
They even tout the “Canadian advantage”: the most educated workforce, a competitive tax system, and democratic stability.
All true — and all the product of a free-market capitalism the current government is quietly suffocating.
What made Canada strong wasn’t the strategic State — it was liberty, trade, and personal responsibility.
Everything this budget undermines.
Carney, the Serious Trudeau
Mark Carney embodies the new progressive technocracy — moral, managerial, and meddling.
Less flamboyant than Trudeau, but just as convinced the State knows better how to spend your money.
Where Trudeau sold emotion, Carney sells competence. The result is the same: a country ever more dependent, centralized, and administrated.
Classical liberals once believed in balanced budgets and personal accountability.
Carney’s liberalism believes in managed outcomes.
We no longer reduce deficits; we “optimize” them.
We no longer create wealth; we “stimulate initiatives.”
We no longer talk about free individuals — only “mobilized Canadians.”
Bureaucratic language has replaced the language of liberty.
Conclusion: The Strong Canada, the Institutionalized Weakness
The 2025 budget doesn’t build a strong Canada. It builds a dependent, indebted, self-righteous State.
It isn’t an economic plan — it’s a poem of self-satisfaction.
Where true liberals see prosperity in risk and diversity, Carney sees virtue in control.
Where the market finds balance, the State breeds dependency.
And where the citizen seeks freedom, the government offers programs.
“Building a Strong Canada,” the slogan says.
But the more the State builds, the less Canadians are free to build for themselves.
And perhaps that’s the real fragility of this country — mistaking government power for national strength.
Samuel Rasmussen –
“Economies don’t need fathers. They need air.”