When the federal government spends your money — and it is most definitely your money — one of the ways it is held accountable is by presenting an annual budget.

The budget, among other things, details how the government spent your money, how much more of your money it will need in the future, the profligate and useful ways in which your money was spent, and — especially in the Liberals’ case — how much debt the government needs to rack up to pay for its excessive spending.

One of the government’s primary roles — perhaps its most important — is to be stewards of the public purse.

Not to have a budget for two years is not only an abdication of that role, it is a slap in the face of all Canadians. Give us your money, says the Liberal government, but accountability? Why, there is no need for that.

The

last budget

in April 2024 promised “fairness for every generation,” to build more homes, to make life more affordable and to grow the economy.

Then it got blown up in December when Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned, charging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with “

political gimmicks

” and implying the Liberals were failing to keep their fiscal powder dry in the face of incoming U.S. tariffs.

The whole episode highlighted just how important it is for us all to keep an eye on the nation’s finances.

Shortly thereafter, Parliament was dissolved, then prorogued, and then there was an election. The supposed democracy of Canada hasn’t had a sitting Parliament for five months.

And now our newly minted finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, says we don’t need a budget this year. Instead, we will get a fall economic statement which isn’t the same thing at all. Often called a mini budget, it is less detailed and more an update on where things stand. Champagne

told

CTV’s Vassy Kapelos, “My objective is to provide (Canadians) with the best possible picture of the finances of Canada. It is to be prudent.”

Champagne said that after the summer parliamentary break and in the fall, there would be a fiscal update “which is going to be substantive and, like I said, there is going to be no surprises.”

Our finance minister speaks in contradictions: on the one hand he wants to give Canadians the best possible picture, and on the other hand, he will only provide a mere update in the fall.

It is also a wonder that the word prudent didn’t turn to ashes in his mouth considering the Liberals abysmal ten-year economic record in power. A new

report

by the Fraser Institute reveals total government spending has soared. In 2014, it was 38.4 per cent of the national economy, last year it was 44.7 per cent. Our debt burden now means we are the seventh highest out of 40 advanced economies.

“Simply put, over the last decade, Canada has experienced substantial growth in both the size of government and the overall debt burden that has outpaced virtually every other advanced country. This has translated to a deterioration in the state of Canada’s finances relative to comparable countries, and likely means lower economic growth and reduced living standards for Canadians,” says the report.

But for Champagne, as he said in the interview, his focus is first a tax break for Canadians, then a Throne Speech and then a fall statement.

Our finance minister, apparently, is incapable of handling more than one thing at a time. Give him a stick of gum and he’ll fall over. As Conservative MP Mike Lake has

pointed out

, in 2011 the new government of Stephen Harper produced a budget six weeks after the election.

Champagne also discounted a budget this year because it normally falls in February or March, and this year there was an election.

Well, after 9/11, then finance minister Paul Martin produced a so-called “security budget” in December, so there’s precedent for having a budget later in the year.

And it’s not as if this is a totally new government. The Liberals have been in power for ten years, they know how things work, almost half the cabinet were in Trudeau’s government, and Champagne has been in Parliament for a decade with stints at industry and international trade.

Not having a budget because it’s the wrong time of the year, is a lame excuse designed to cover up a deep-seated disdain for being held accountable. Although, let’s not dismiss the idea that the finances are so bad the Liberals are reluctant to detail them in public.

It was the Liberals who previously touted their high-profile guardrails to keep the finances under control. But then the guardrails were exceeded, then they were changed and then they were dropped.

No guardrails, no budget and no accountability. Two decades ago, the

second report

of the Gomery Commission, the inquiry into Adscam, the Liberal sponsorship scandal under Jean Chrétien, was entitled “Restoring Accountability.”

It noted that there needed to be greater transparency in the operation of government and that, “Parliament’s capacity to exercise its traditional roles of watchdog of the public purse and guardian of the public interest will have to be reinforced.”

Not having a budget makes the government less accountable, Parliament more impotent and the public distrustful and disregarded.

The public purse belongs to the people of Canada. They have a right to know how much is in there and who is dipping into it.

Having a budget isn’t some privilege granted to the people, it’s a right with roots that go back to the

Magna Carta

of 1215 — a charter which was also about accountability.

We need a budget now.

National Post

For a guy who peddled glossy

golden high-top sneakers

and a line of

superhero trading cards

bearing his image during his run for the presidency, accepting a “free” US$400 million

flying palace

from a foreign country eager for his favour is just another day at the office for Donald Trump.

In Trump’s case, the office is the White House, and the luxury jet he’s been offered by the Qatari government is just more evidence of the high favour in which he’s held around the world, according to official spokespeople. That the Trump family business is building a luxury golf and beachside residential development in Qatar in a

deal including a company owned by the Qatari government

is beside the point. As is the fact the president is accepting the gift from a foreign power while prosecuting a tariff war launched on the premise that Americans should do their business with fellow Americans — for the sake of the nation — rather than favouring unAmerican competitors.

Doesn’t matter. In a country where each new day starts with another headline about the latest capers in the Oval Office, it’s just another big ho-hum. Remember last week when he wanted to

tariffize the movies

, as if anyone could define precisely what made a film American when virtually every such venture involves input from around the globe? Or the sudden need to rescue white people from South Africa, where they make up just eight per cent of the population but

own

75 per cent of the private land?

What’s notable about the Qatari commotion is not that it’s worse than any other hundred-or-so Trumpian brouhahas, but how little these episodes disturb the placid surface of American indifference. As the president was welcoming the exceedingly generous freebie from an authoritarian monarchy where political parties are banned, his Republican disciples in Congress were releasing their plans to

slash

up to US$880 billion in spending, largely targeted at the Medicaid

program

that provides health coverage to low-income adults, children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with disabilities.

The Congressional Budget Office calculates the plan would remove coverage for about eight million people who can’t afford their own. New costs would be imposed on those earning above the federal poverty level, which

starts

at US$1,300 a month for individuals.

The disparity between the president’s good fortune and that of his flock, many of them no doubt firm Maga-ites, was noted, but caused no serious disturbance. And no wonder, it’s not like anything’s changed.

The Wall Street Journal recently

reported

that the richest 19 households in the U.S. gained an extra US$1 trillion in wealth last year. More, it said, than Switzerland’s entire economy. The country’s top 1 per cent now hold 31 per cent of its wealth, against 3 per cent for the bottom half of the population. From outside its borders, the U.S. may bear a worrying resemblance to the Bourbon nobility just before the French Revolution, but within its walls, America’s aristocracy appears perfectly safe. The last time Americans stormed anything, it was in support of the very administration — all

covered

by generous, subsidized health benefits — that demands they start paying their own way for doctor visits.

That insouciance evidently extends to the president’s increasingly blatant use of his position as a means to further enrich himself and his family. The Qatari resort deal is just one of an impressive collection of money-making schemes in the works for the first family and those who have successfully cozied their way into the circle of friendship.

Trump governs by whim and has a well-established practice of reversing, re-reversing and possibly re-re-reversing himself under pressure, so the fate of the Qatari gift remains up in the air. But it fits his steady reduction of U.S. ethics to the subterranean levels he inhabits.

Anne Applebaum, the journalist and historian known for her work on autocracies, has taken to collecting

samples

of the administration’s self-serving dealings. Examples in her Kleptocracy Tracker range from the unashamedly blatant — an ultra-private club in Washington launched by Donald Trump Jr. and friendly mega-donors where supplicants can pay up big time to win the favour of presidential surrogates — to the byzantine, which is the only way to describe the web of interconnected interests behind the billions of dollars in cryptocurrency and related dealings that have immensely increased the Trump family’s net worth since he took office.

Trump is due to

host

the biggest buyers of his family’s own crypto coin, the $TRUMP, at an “ultra-exclusive private VIP Reception” and gala dinner this month. The coin,

launched

just as its namesake was reclaiming the White House, hit US$5.5 billion within hours of launch, much of the buying reportedly by foreign interests with much to gain by proximity to the presidential ear. Is it likely to cause significant damage to the president’s standing? Not likely. These things pass largely undisturbed across the American consciousness, like a flock of birds crossing at high altitude, noticed, perhaps, but shrugged off as just another matter of no great significance.

A country that once fought a war to free itself from the clutches of a near-absolute monarch now dozes idly through a debauched regime it elected itself and continues to tolerate as it busily promotes its own interests over theirs. When future historians come to puzzle over this strange time, the toughest riddle may not be how or why Donald Trump managed to become president, but why Americans let him corrupt so many of their beliefs and institutions, unmolested and in plain sight.

National Post

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TOP STORY

Only two months into the job, Prime Minister Mark Carney is already steamrolling through the usual checks by which a Canadian government is supposed to spend and manage taxpayer money.

During the federal election, Carney greenlit a record $70 billion without Parliamentary approval. And now, even before the House of Commons has reconvened, his government has

signalled its intentions not to publish a budget

.

With both actions, the new Liberal government has neutered one of the reasons Canada has a Parliament in the first place: To review and manage the disbursement of money.

“The direct control of national finance has been referred to as the ‘great task of modern parliamentary government’,”

reads the procedural guidebook

given to all new Canadian MPs.

The text then reminds them that “the House of Commons has exclusive control over the business of public finance.”

The procedural notes for the Canadian Senate

similarly tell

Senators that managing the appropriation of money is “among the most important tasks that parliamentarians undertake.”

During his brief tenure, Carney has already used his executive authority to request two disbursements of money outside the federal government’s usual spending channels.

On April 1, Carney was granted an order-in-council releasing $40.3 billion in emergency funds. The second, granted on May 2, was for $33.1 billion.

The orders alone are not unprecedented: There’s long been a provision for the Governor General to release emergency funds to keep the lights on during a federal election.

It’s called a “special warrant”; an emergency dispensation of money “urgently required for the public good.”

Where Carney took the provision into uncharted territory is in the sheer scale of money, $73.4 billion, that he released via special warrants without the figures being approved by the House of Commons.

In the snap election of 2011, by contrast, it only took $24.5 billion in special warrants to keep the federal government operational. The 2008 election required no special warrants; there was enough pre-approved money to wait until the House of Commons convened after the election.

On the issue of a federal budget, Carney is also not violating any written rules in refusing to produce one. He’ll simply be breaking with more than a century of Parliamentary precedent in tabling multi-billion-dollar appropriations bills before the House of Commons with few specifics as to his government’s wider fiscal plans.

It’s been more than five months since the federal government has actually approved funding the way it’s supposed to: Via an itemized “money bill” that is approved in a vote by the House of Commons.

The last one, for $21.6 billion,

was passed on Dec. 10

— when Carney’s day job was still as an executive with Brookfield Asset Management.

The Dec. 10 appropriations bill details how much money is going to each federal agency, but it lacks any information about the government’s wider fiscal picture.

The bill only covers four months of government spending, so there’s no information about how much is being spent across the fiscal year, where the money is coming from, and how much is being financed via debt.

If the Carney government intends to simply limp along with periodic appropriations bills, the result will be much the same for the foreseeable future. Parliamentarians will be given itemized lists of new government spending to approve, but without any wider context.

This is all the more notable given that even when the Liberals were telling Canadians their spending plans, they were conspicuously unable to stick to them.

The resignation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was driven in large part by a disastrous Fall Economic Statement, delivered on Dec. 16, which revealed that the federal government was on track to rack up

$61.9 billion in new debt

, way higher than the $40.1 billion they had been shooting for. Although sometimes called “minibudgets,” Fall Economic Statements are different in that they don’t necessarily have to be passed by the House of Commons.

As to why the Carney government feels it necessary to dispense with a budget, the best answer from Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne appears to be that they don’t need one because they already outlined their generalized spending priorities in the Liberal election platform.

“We said we’re going to spend less so we can invest more, we said to Canadians where we’re going to invest … a lot of that is out there,” Champagne told CBC.

There have been periods in Canadian history where the country has gone more than a year without a federal budget. But there were always extenuating circumstances.

The most obvious being the failure to table a federal budget in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the midst of the Second World War, similarly, the feds

went a then-record 482 days between budget presentations

.

But what hasn’t really happened before is a government refusing to table a budget in the immediate aftermath of a contentious federal election resulting in a hung parliament.

Upon news of Carney’s “no budget” plans, Conservative MP Mike Lake noted that the Tories had a budget ready only five weeks after their victory in the 2011 general election. Election day was May 2, and finance minister Jim Flaherty

had a budget

in front of the House of Commons by June 6.

Wrote Lake, “it is entirely unacceptable for this new Carney Liberal government not to present a budget at this time of fiscal chaos caused by the previous Liberal government.”

 

IN OTHER NEWS

On the same day that the new finance minister said there would be no budget and the housing minister said that housing prices shouldn’t go down, the new foreign affairs minister repeated propaganda about Israel intentionally starving Gazan civilians. “We cannot allow the continued use of food as a political tool,” said Anita Anand, before uncritically

repeating Hamas-provided figures on Gazan civilian casualties

. Although anti-Israel organizations perennially claim that Gaza has been intentionally brought to the brink of famine by Israeli action, it’s

never actually happened

, even with the routine theft of aid supplies by Hamas.

After the Liberals won a Quebec riding by a single vote in a controversial recount, the second-place Bloc Québécois is

taking Elections Canada to court

, alleging that the process was mismanaged. Of particular note is that at least one Bloc voter had her mail-in ballot returned to her because Elections Canada misprinted the label – something that Elections Canada admits.

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• John Ivison: After just one day, Carney’s cabinet already looks out of control
• Carson Jerema: Anita Anand debuts at foreign affairs by doing publicity for Hamas

There have been concerns about the “presidentialization” of the Canadian prime ministership for years — worries that have been exacerbated by

Mark Carney’s tendency to sign Trump-style legislative orders to grant tax cuts

.

Academics have suggested that the cabinet has become nothing more than a focus group for the prime minister, who instead of being

primus inter pares

(first among equals) is now merely

primus

.

On the evidence of the new cabinet’s first day in office, that may be no bad thing.

Politicians who don’t know what they’re talking about should follow the old proverb: “A closed mouth gathers no foot.”

Yet on Wednesday, ministers rushed to the mics outside the cabinet room like turtle hatchlings dashing to the ocean to meet the waiting reef sharks.

The new housing minister, Gregor Robertson, was

asked if house prices need to fall

. “No, we need to deliver more supply to make sure the market is stable,” he said — a move that even a cabinet minister should be able to see would lower prices.

Millennials viewed this as an admission that the new minister doesn’t think housing should ever be affordable for their generation.

The implicit bargain is to protect the wealth of existing homeowners, while hinting at cheaper prices to come for new buyers.

The political imperative is to dance on the head of a pin, as Carney did Thursday when he was asked if he was signalling that he didn’t think prices should go down.

“You’d be very hard pressed to make that conclusion from everything I’ve said and what our priorities are,” he said, without committing himself one way or another.

Robertson wasn’t the only one to step in it.

Steven Guilbeault, the minister of Canadian identity, is apparently having separation anxiety from his old job as environment minister and, instead of sticking to his own lane,

answered questions on pipeline policy

.

Before Canada starts talking about building new pipelines, he said, it should maximize use of existing infrastructure like the Trans Mountain pipeline, which he claimed is operating at 40 per cent capacity.

Aside from the fact the company says it is utilizing 77 percent of its capacity, why is the culture minister offering opinions that land in the West like weeping gelignite? Surely, his job is to try to cultivate, rather than sabotage, a Canadian identity?

The comments were in stark contrast to the prime minister’s during a CTV interview the other day, when he said he supports building pipelines if the consensus exists for them. “I’m a prime minister who can help create that consensus,” he said, suggesting he is minded to try.

The third gaffe of the day belonged to Anita Anand, the new foreign affairs minister, who decided to wade into the quagmire of Middle East politics —

with disastrous effect

.

She said that Israel cannot be allowed to use food as a political tool. “The prime minister has been clear on that. Fifty-thousand people have died because of aggression against the Palestinian people and Gazan people in Palestine. Using food as a political tool is simply unacceptable,” she said.

Carney did

talk about the issue on social media during the general election

but, while he criticized the Israeli government’s blockade of Gaza, he also said Palestinian civilians must not suffer the consequences of Hamas’s “terrorist crimes” and said Canada would continue to work for the release of all Israeli hostages.

In all three instances, the rookie prime minister proved more adept at standing on all sides of the issues than his hapless colleagues.

As an aside, with all that material to work with, it was somewhat surprising to hear the leader of the Opposition singling out

François-Philippe Champagne’s admission that there won’t be a budget any time soon

as his main talking point Thursday. But maybe this is part of a new plan to broaden Pierre Poilievre’s appeal, by not actually opposing the government.

What the first day fumbles suggest is that Carney’s hopes of having a more “traditional” cabinet government are a little impulsive.

Former prime minister Stephen Harper, almost by necessity, pioneered a kind of executive democracy that was highly centralized and kept ministers on a tight leash. Justin Trudeau quickly adopted many of the same principles, where the centre governed from on high.

Carney likely wants his PMO to be a strategic player but not to micromanage his ministers.

But it is already clear that he needs to become more presidential, not less, to co-ordinate his team, set priorities and provide clear communication lines on files for ministers less skilled in the art of ambiguity than a former bank governor is.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

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.

A day after being sworn in as foreign affairs minister,

Anita Anand lashed out at Israel proving,

yet again, that the Liberals are oddly concerned with keeping the support of those who sympathize with terrorists.

When asked by a reporter about Israel’s blockade of Gaza, Anand

could

have pointed out that Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that governs the enclave, had been stealing aid and reselling it for profit. She

could

have pointed out that it was Hamas that refused to continue a ceasefire with Israel that would have ended the war. She

could

have pointed out that Hamas continues to hold hostages, or that it routinely inflates casualty numbers and obscures the number of fighters killed to leave the impression of higher civilian deaths. Finally, Anand

could

 have pointed out that Hamas started the war with Israel by committing the October 7 massacre.

She could have pointed out any number of those things, but instead, Anand chose to attack Israel. “We cannot allow the continued use of food as a political tool,” she started, conveniently ignoring Hamas’s routine theft of aid. The organization has profited

at least US$500 million

since October 7, funds it has used to bolster its terrorist ranks. For example, in October Hamas

was caught on camera

hijacking 47 aid trucks in a convoy of 100.

After Israel started its blockade in March, however, Hamas started to struggle to pay its ranks, as funds from stealing

aid began to dry up.

Chastising Israel for using food as a “political tool” while overlooking the fact humanitarian aid has been used to fund Hamas’s own war effort, demonstrates an appalling level of bad faith on the part of the foreign affairs minister.

Anand then summed up the war as one entirely of Israel’s making, while simultaneously accepting Hamas’s dubious casualty count. “Over 50,000 people have died as a result of the aggression caused against the Palestinian and the Gazan people in Palestine,” she said.

Anand, apparently, gets her information and her talking points from Hamas, which, again, started this war when it slaughtered 1200 people in southern Israel. Suggesting war is “a result of the aggression caused against” the Palestinians shows she is either very poorly informed, or deliberately pushing an anti-Israel agenda that is absent of facts.

As for the number of casualties, the Hamas controlled health ministry is an unreliable source, routinely listing deaths that never occurred, with 3,400

supposed deaths being dropped in April.

A

report

in December by think tank the Henry Jackson Society found that casualty counts were regularly manipulated, including, for example, listing thousands of people who would have died whether there was a conflict or not, such as cancer patients, as among the war dead. The report found that 17,000 of the then supposed 44,000 deaths were Hamas fighters, and a majority of those killed were males between the ages of 15 and 45. Hamas also notoriously embeds itself in schools, mosques and hospitals, using its population as human shields.

Repeating Hamas’s casualty numbers without at least distinguishing between Hamas fighters and actual civilians is repeating terrorist propaganda.

Anand also said “we need to continue to work towards a ceasefire,” but, again, it is not Israel that is standing in the way of an end to hostilities. After the end of

 a 42-day ceasefire in March,

Israel had agreed to a U.S. proposal to move to a second phase that would have eventually led to the end of the war. It was Hamas that refused in part because it didn’t want to agree to be disarmed.

Anand’s blaming of Israel, while ignoring the actions of Hamas continues the regrettable pattern of her predecessor,

Mélanie “have you seen the demographics of my riding” Joly.

Under Joly’s “leadership,” Canada continued funding UNRWA, despite the fact some of its employees took part in October 7, an arms embargo was implemented against Israel, and Canada supported a UN motion calling for a ceasefire that placed no conditions on Hamas. Joly’s department

condemned an Israeli attack on a school that never occurred,

just as Joly herself

condemned

Israel for an explosion at a hospital that was

committed by the Palestinian side.

Again and again, the Canadian government’s position could be summed up as: Israel has a right to defend itself, so long as it doesn’t use its army. The terrorists who started all this? Well, they are the victims of “aggression,” according to Anand.

All of this would be bad enough, but Canada’s government contributes nothing to resolving the conflict. The Liberals want to snipe at Israel, painting distorted pictures of the war, without doing any of the work. By not supporting the only democracy in the Middle East, Canada forfeits any influence it might have over Israeli policy, showing that this Liberal government is just as performative as the last.

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