Prime Minister Mark Carney is outspending former prime minister Justin Trudeau. Canada’s last fiscal year – and the estimates for the upcoming 2026-27 fiscal year – are the two largest federal government spending years in the country’s history – aside from that single pandemic year and the countless CERB cheques mailed to locked-down Canadians. So, think about this: global banker Carney is outspending Trudeau, who was admittedly bad at math and did not think of Canada’s fiscal and monetary policy.
In related news this week from Ottawa, the lights were turned off in the office of the government’s fiscal watchdog – because the prime minister’s office permitted the lead officer’s contract to lapse and then it failed to name a new head. The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) is a non-partisan, impartial agency that was established in 2006 to inform Canadians on how the federal government is spending taxpayers’ dollars. The PBO holds the government accountable for its spending, its budgetary discrepancies and tax practices, including the carbon tax regime, and the size and efficiency of the public service. Essentially, the PBO provides an invaluable service as an independent source of unbiased information for parliamentarians and the public at large. And remarkably, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked Canada’s PBO number one, the very best in the world, in the review of its 35 member countries.
On Monday, the contract lapsed for interim head of the PBO, Jason Jacques. The office then reported out on Tuesday that analyses and published reports from the PBO are suspended until a new head is named. Also, the office will not be responding to requests of parliamentarians or government officials until there is a new head named. One can appreciate how wrong this turn of events is when the editorial board of the government’s apologist newspaper, the Globe and Mail, writes a lead editorial: “The Liberals have muzzled the federal fiscal watchdog.”
The backstory to this matter is interesting. Jacques replaced Yves Giroux last September, after Giroux’s contract was similarly allowed to lapse by the PMO. As it is, both men are scorned by the prime minister and Liberal MPs for their assessment of the federal government’s fiscal performance and management of operations. In a fall 2025 appearance before a parliamentary committee, Jacques described the health of federal finances as “stupefying,” “shocking” and “unsustainable,” criticizing the government’s deficit spending and ballooning debt, and the lack of a fiscal plan forward. Since that testimony, there has been little cooperation between the Liberals and the PBO.
In a revealing Toronto Sun column, Wanted: A watchdog, not a lapdog, of Liberal spending, Lorrie Goldstein quotes Giroux from a Hill Times interview that he gave, saying that the prime minister is deliberately “silencing” the PBO: Carney is “in effect silencing an agent of Parliament and preventing the office from fulfilling its mandate. It’s clear to me that it is a conscious decision to have the PBO quiet, or to ensure the institution is quiet for some time.”
Giroux explained the controversy, “The office cannot answer MPs’ or committees’ requests and they cannot publish anything. So, de facto, it means that, for parliamentarians, the office is shut down and it means the same thing for the media and Canadians, because the longer the position remains empty, the longer the PBO or the office cannot publish anything.”
With the PBO closed, there will be no unbiased investigative oversight or public reporting of the government’s finances. The timing of this lapse of reporting is highly suspect given the government has just tabled in parliament its spending estimates for next year…
Government’s estimate spending has gone unreported in mainstream media. Ask yourself, “Why?”
On Feb. 26, just before parliament was recessing for a week, the Liberals tabled the government’s main estimates for fiscal year 2026-27. With the government no longer delivering a spring budget, this document is the only accounting of how the government intends on spending Canadian taxpayers’ money. The 2026-27 fiscal plan calls for more than $502,830,000,000 in spending, including $230.4 billion of government programs that will be voted on in parliament. The National Defence expenditures ($48.4 billion) account for roughly 20 per cent of this total.
The $502 billion total being spent this upcoming year is up about three percent from last year’s estimate of $486.9 billion – which was up more than eight per cent from the previous year under Trudeau’s fiscal stewardship. However, it must be noted that the current fiscal year has blown past its estimated total. This year, Carney’s first year at the helm, the government’s total spending is estimated to be $510.7 billion – and counting (the fiscal year ends on March 31). So, Carney has outspent Trudeau in year one of his government – and intends on spending even more in year two.
The government’s spending plans are laid out in the hundreds of pages of main estimates that now must be reviewed by MPs and Senators – and the public (by banks and financial institutions, business organizations, NGOs and agencies, media and concerned individuals). MPs will be expected to vote on the details. Yet MPs and others will not have the benefit of the expert analysis and commentary from the PBO. As Calgary MP Stephanie Kusie, who is the Conservative point person for the estimates, observed, “Without the PBO in place, parliamentarians are left without one of our most valuable resources in holding the government to account on this spending. I am very concerned by Liberals inaction and politicization which has left the office of the PBO essentially unable to do its job of providing government oversight.”
The big-spending, big-government Carney Liberals will just keep spending. The new GST credit promised to help offset families grocery bills will cost taxpayers anywhere from $6 billion (says Carney) to $14 billion (says the PBO). Last week Carney promised another $2 billion to Ukraine and this week he pledged an estimated $1 billion to cover off United Nations fees for a European oil project. Just this week while in India, the prime minister promised tens of millions for scholarships for Indian students… it just does not end.
Big government (a.k.a. the Ottawa blob) just keeps getting bigger with the Liberals, and there is no explanation for the numbers involved. Statistics Canada just published a labour force survey that shows there are 4.597 million public-sector employees out of 18.426 million total workers in Canada. That means one of every four workers in Canada work for government. In the PBO’s latest report (released just before they turned their office lights out), it revealed, “In 2024-25, the federal public service expanded to 448,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs), an increase of 7,000 FTEs (1.6 per cent) compared to the previous year.” The PBO also factored that total compensation for a FTE averaged $143,271 last year (this is nearly two and a half times the figure that Statistics Canada reports as a Canadians’ average income at $59,400). It is a matter of record that Ottawa bureaucracy grew with the Trudeau government: 100,000 FTEs in 10 years, and 146,786 federal employees (nearly 40 per cent) make a six-figure salary. Again, it just does not end.
The Carney government is actually growing the Ottawa blob with new offices: the Majors Projects Office, to help fast-track national infrastructure projects through Ottawa’s regulations and approval processes (with not one shovel in the ground of any new project yet); the Defence Investment Agency, opened to help defence contractors navigate the government’s procurement process (with no contracts yet signed – and office still to be fully staffed after eight months); and the new federal housing office, to build 500,000 homes a year (and with only nine homes in Nunavut built to date).
Conveniently for the Carney government there is no honest broker like the PBO reporting out to Canadians on the government’s overspending and largesse. That is disconcerting. But more alarming still for Canadians is that our banker-turned-prime minister is championing bigger government and more spending – unimaginably, more than even his predecessor.
Next Week: Carney Liberals taking from the Canadian Pension Plan
Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.
