JJ from Austria stands on the stage with the trophy after winning the Grand Final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest in Basel, Switzerland, in May.Martin Meissner/The Associated Press
Look at these simpletons, doddering around waving their budget report cards. They assert that Prime Minister Mark Carney did not deliver on his promise of transformational change, of generational investment. They huff that Mr. Carney has crafted a fairly typical Liberal big-spending budget, with the exception of actual investment in Canada’s military (though the budget is light on details) and plans to reduce the size of the public service by 40,000 jobs by 2028-29.
But a seismic shift in Canada’s economic outlook this is not – or so these armchair economists declare, pointing their pudgy fingers at the $78.3-billion deficit figure on Page 66. There’s no radical regulatory change to entice private capital to invest in Canada, no dramatic shift in Canadian tax policy to counter U.S. corporate tax cuts, nothing bold, nothing risky, nothing that meets the moment that the Prime Minister has spent the past seven months telling Canadians we were in.
But what these critics failed to recognize (or “recognise,” as Mr. Carney tends to write), is that the path to a better Canada is right there in the budget – a line in Chapter 3 – that spells out how Canada can, and will, become the proud, strong, prosperous European nation that our Prime Minister apparently wishes it would be.
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No, it will not reform its health care systems to allow for both private and public delivery, as is the norm in the Netherlands, in Germany or Norway, which could result in both federal savings and better access and health care outcomes.
No, it will not bring its citizenship rules in line with countries like Britain and France, which got rid of automatic citizenship for anyone born on its soil decades ago – a change that would reduce both birth tourism and the incentive for non-permanent residents to have children as a means to secure their own status.
And no, the federal government is not planning to exert pressure on provinces and municipalities to bring building codes and zoning rules in line with many European nations, including, for example, by allowing single-stairway apartment complexes, in an effort to boost housing supply.
No, Canada’s existential opportunity – its path to prosperity, the radical change that will see us through this terribly uncertain time – can be summed up in one word: Eurovision.
Everything else in this budget is a distraction. Its key line is this: “The government will explore modernising [note that British spelling again!] CBC/Radio-Canada’s mandate to strengthen independence, and is working with CBC/Radio Canada to explore participation in Eurovision.”
The CBC actually considered participating in the European Broadcasting Union’s song competition a couple of years ago, when it met with a Toronto production company with the idea of a show to find a competitor to represent Canada. But Canada’s public broadcaster, which is slated to receive $150-million in public funds in 2025-26, called the prospect “prohibitively expensive.”
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Nevertheless, we must trust that our technocrat Prime Minister, who was elected on a promise to restore some sanity to Canada’s economic outlook and finally turn the page on Justin Trudeau’s decade of cheesy international showboating, sees a greater purpose to our prospective Eurovision participation. Perhaps that purpose is to allow Mr. Carney more opportunities to sit with French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the cool European table. Or maybe it’s so that he can imagine, just for a little bit, like he’s back in refined, dignified London, instead of drab old Ottawa, where the proletariat slurp from Tim Hortons cups on the sidewalks.
Canada is, in the aspirational words of our Prime Minister, the “most European of non-European nations.” And particularly at this time, when our identity – and indeed, our very sovereignty – is being threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump, it is so crucially important that we resist American influence and pursue European influence instead.
In his prebudget address to students at the University of Ottawa, Mr. Carney warned that “to seize this hinge moment, we will have to make tough choices.” He did not signal then that the tough choice would be whether Canada opts for a Maritime-style folk song, or something more along the lines of Montreal indie-pop. “We used to take big, bold risks in this country,” he said. “It is time to swing for the fences again.”
And indeed, we will do that not with radical tax and policy changes to entice private capital, not with overhauling our approach to resource extraction to unleash the massive wealth Canada has mostly left in the ground, and not by fundamentally rethinking the role of our public sector and of our public services. No, Canada will swing for the fences by reaching for the microphone. Canada strong. Canada free. Canada in Eurovision.