Rob Csernyik is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
As anyone under the age of 40 knows, generational gaps cause sore spots in discussions about getting ahead. Some people who came through their economic milestones decades ago don’t understand how different the path is today, or how many obstacles litter it. Budget 2025 shows that the Carney Liberals also suffer from this mismatch between affordability and ambition, and a lack of reality of how tough it is out there on Main Street.
The Canada Strong budget presented flexes of the country’s economic ambition and bravado in ways that seem new.
Federal budget basics
Here are the highlights of the Carney government’s plan, and how they might affect your personal finances.
Its buzzword-laden goal is apparently to turn us into a nation of builders, homeowners and innovators – someone our peers look to emulate. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that I’d gleefully curtail some of this ambition for some significant, upfront cost savings in my personal life. To jockey less for position in the new world order, and focus more on getting Canadians through life in less of a financial vice-grip.
For its part, the government seems satisfied with its approach to lowering costs, and in its own words “creating an economy where every Canadian has more control over building their own future.” But I don’t feel any more in control, or that I’ll experience any further financial stability in the future based on what’s offered.
Eight ways the budget affects your wallet, from vacant homes to student loans
Affordable, in the Carney-verse, largely applies to housing costs. This is by “supercharging homebuilding” through the Build Canada Homes agency, for instance, or cutting the GST on homes costing $1-million or below for first-time homebuyers. The latter makes life more affordable, but only for those who can reach this level of buyer’s readiness to begin with.
A Desjardins economist wrote in May that it takes prospective homeowners longer to save for down payments because of “the widening gap between home prices and income gains, paired with high rent inflation between 2022 and 2024.”
For those of us not ready to buy, it’s necessary to avail ourselves of whatever affordability gruel is offered. This includes promises to increase the amount of immediately available cheque funds upon deposit by $50, reducing cheque hold times and reviewing bank fees. These will save some headaches and make a difference in the fiscal solvency of some Canadians, though not enough to change futures.
Non-vehicle owners aren’t directly feeling the savings from axing the carbon price at gas pumps. Nor are non-parents – or even most parents – feeling grocery bill savings attributed to the National School Food Program, which was touted in the budget for feeding up to 400,000 kids annually.
Opinion: When the big day came, it wasn’t quite as advertised
The Canada Strong Pass for discounted Parks Canada and museum trips and reduced tolls at Prince Edward Island’s Confederation Bridge, which are presented as examples of making life in Canada cheaper as the cost of living keeps rising, suggests our government’s operating definitions of “life” and “cheaper” may be too narrow.
Leading up to this budget, the term “transformational” was frequently thrown around. I clearly let my hopes get too high that such economic transformation might get passed down in novel ways. In a release after Budget 2024, the government described the increase in the capital-gains tax inclusion rate as a specific measure “to make life cost less” for every generation, “particularly millennials and Gen Z.” Now those increases have been reversed, those plans dispatched and this year neither generation gets a shout-out.
There’s no shortage of ideas on how to achieve affordability for the generations struggling the most without the country going into the red. In its submission to Ottawa, well-being think tank Generation Squeeze calculated that reducing the amount of Old Age Security paid to affluent pensioners with incomes of more than $100,000 annually would save the feds $36-billion over five years.
Savings like this could go toward initiatives to make life more affordable for younger generations, including student loan relief, First Home Savings Account annual limit increases, expanding $10 daycare and financial incentives which reduce the price of major purchases such as restoring electric-vehicle incentives. Instead, this bold idea made the cutting room floor.
I guess there’s always next year.