A big-moment budget Carney has packed with expectations

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Everything is supposed to be in there. An economic transformation plan. Industrial retooling. Cuts to a bloated civil service. A rebuilding of the military. Recalibrated immigration targets. A climate competitiveness strategy.

Few prime ministers have put so much of their politics into one budget.

That has been the Mark Carney way. His whirlwind arrival in politics was built on raising expectations, on building up an ever-more-tense “hinge moment” and promising to meet it.

In April, at an election-campaign stop at a Nova Bus factory in Saint-Eustache, Que., Mr. Carney promised “an entirely new fiscal approach” that would build “a new, resilient economy.” Two weeks ago, he gave a speech touting the budget’s “generational” impact. Last week, after U.S. President Donald Trump cut off trade talks, Mr. Carney argued that what Canada does at home will be more important – pointing to Tuesday’s budget.

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For eight months, Mr. Carney has sketched out an image of a Canadian economy that will thrive no matter what Mr. Trump does. Now his government has to paint that picture with numbers.

There were numbers in the Liberal Party election platform, including the forecast of a $62-billion deficit this fiscal year. But since then, Ottawa has collected only a fraction of the $20-billion in tariff revenues projected in the platform, and increased defence spending by $9-billion. There will be more red ink.

More fundamentally, the economy that Mr. Carney promised to make more independent has softened because of U.S. tariffs, the unemployment rate has ticked up above 7 per cent, and some manufacturers have announced layoffs and plant closings.

In his Oct. 22 prebudget speech, Mr. Carney warned that his promised economic transformation will require sacrifices – presumably program cuts and civil-service reductions – and take time. In a video posted on social media on Monday, Mr. Carney warned of difficult choices, but he also touted a plan to put Canadians back in control.

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That underlines the bigger promise that the budget is supposed to deliver on. Transforming the Canadian economy so that it is no longer dependent on exports to the United States is a massive challenge.

Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne has compared it to 1945, when legendary reconstruction minister C.D. Howe was tasked with turning Canada’s war-production machine into profitable peacetime industries that would employ returning troops. But Canada’s postwar industry enjoyed weak global competition, pent-up consumer demand and a booming U.S. economy. Mr. Champagne will apparently rely more on public-money levers.

The big spending – Mr. Carney’s video touted plans to build homes, ports, electricity grids and major infrastructure – is going to be characterized as the price of Canadian sovereignty. Politically, the opposition will effectively be dared to vote against the cost of economic independence.

When it is all knitted together, the question will be whether the budget really represents a formula for far-reaching economic transformation. Or a new formula at all. Liberal budgets under Justin Trudeau also booked infrastructure spending and tax credits for green tech, and created infrastructure banks and funds aimed at fuelling investment.

Mr. Carney has sunk so many of the expectations of his government into this budget that his agenda depends heavily on the credibility of the blueprint Mr. Champagne will deliver. And the economic document will roll in plans on the hot-button political issues of climate policy and immigration.

There is room for the Liberals to face trouble in Parliament, too. Minority governments often float trial balloons before budgets to see what might get shot down and sometimes make explicit deals to ensure survival in a budget vote. The seven New Democratic MPs don’t have a lot of resources for an election but won’t be keen to support a budget with a raft of public-service layoffs.

All the opposition parties have some reason to think they might win more seats in a new election than they did in April, but it is still a big gamble for each. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would be wagering his political career, the Bloc Québécois its financial health and the NDP its survival. It still seems likely that one will balk at the risk.

But it is Mr. Carney who has the most at stake. So many of the wait-and-see questions about his agenda come due for answers on Tuesday.