Parliamentary Budget Officer Annette Ryan appears before the standing committee on finance in Ottawa on March 23.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
The new Parliamentary Budget Officer, Annette Ryan, is set to release a wave of backlogged reports, starting Monday with her assessment of the federal Liberal government’s Spring Economic Update.
Ms. Ryan offered a preview of her report at a committee appearance last week, where she said the update outlined measures that will increase the federal debt burden, provided fiscal targets that lack clarity and launched a sovereign wealth fund that “raised more questions than it answered.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed Ms. Ryan as PBO on April 22, nearly two months after the position became vacant when the interim PBO’s six-month term expired. The term of the previous permanent PBO expired in September, 2025.
Since March 2, the independent parliamentary office has been unable to table its regular reports because of the vacancy in the top job.
In a notice released Friday, the office said its report on the spring update will include a review of the government’s spending trends, fiscal anchors and fiscal sustainability, major capital priorities and Mr. Carney’s announcement that the government will temporarily suspend the federal fuel excise tax.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne’s spring update last Tuesday showed Ottawa’s bottom line had improved by about $60-billion over five years since he released his November budget. However, spending announcements since then, including new spending announced in the update, used about $54-billion of that amount.
That includes more than $12-billion over six years for a boost to the income-tested GST credit, a move the government has branded the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit.
The spring update showed an estimated deficit of $66.9-billion for the 2025-26 fiscal year, an $11.5-billion improvement over what the government had projected in the Nov. 4 budget. Deficit forecasts for future years were largely unchanged from the budget.
The update announced a new sovereign wealth fund that will be debt-financed with an initial $25-billion budget. The government says the fund will invest on commercial terms alongside private investors to support major Canadian infrastructure projects.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held a news conference in Toronto Sunday to highlight the growing federal debt, which he notes is on track to reach $1.6-trillion in 2030-31, which would be about $1-trillion more than where it stood when the Liberals formed government under Justin Trudeau in 2015.
“We will end credit-card budgeting by getting back to a balanced budget in the medium term,” he said, adding that a Conservative government would cut spending on bureaucracy and corporate welfare.
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During an appearance Thursday before the House of Commons government operations committee, Ms. Ryan said Ottawa needs to provide more details about the wealth fund.
“I think that the announcement in the spring economic statement raised more questions than it answered,” she said. “I think that there’s an important governance and transparency set of questions about how those debt charges will be calculated in that rate of return, and what transparency and protections against misappropriation and misuse will happen in terms of how investors can benefit from those public funds but be protected from downside risks.”
Ms. Ryan said her office will focus closely on how the government follows through on its “fiscal anchor” targets of reducing the deficit-to-GDP ratio and balancing the operating budget, so that deficit spending is only going to what Ottawa defines as capital investments.
“Fiscal sustainability and the transparency and trajectory of overall spending remain a priority concern for the Parliamentary Budget Office,” she said. “While the government has met its first fiscal anchor of achieving a declining deficit-to-GDP track in the spring update, it has yet to define its second fiscal anchor beyond a general commitment to balance operating spending with revenues.”
The update shows the deficit-to-GDP ratio declining to 1.9 per cent this fiscal year, down from 2.1 the previous year. However, as recently as 2024, the Liberal government under Mr. Trudeau had said it had a “fiscal objective” that would keep the deficit under 1 per cent of GDP in 2026-27 and future years. That has since been abandoned.
During Thursday’s meeting, Conservative MP Harb Gill said the interim PBO, Jason Jacques, was known for being “blunt” about the state of federal finances and urged Ms. Ryan to continue that approach.
“If you believe the government is heading down the wrong financial direction, I hope you too are prepared to point that out in just as plain terms and blunt language as we have come to expect from our PBO,” he said.
Ms. Ryan replied that it is very important that the PBO’s work be done “rigorously with the highest standard of excellence and independence.” She said she also believes that it should be communicated clearly to help parliamentarians hold the government’s “feet to the fire.”
“I look forward to you receiving our initial reports ... so that you can judge if that test is being met,” she said.