Liberal Inflationary Spending By The Numbers
Ottawa, ON – With Canada’s GDP down in two consecutive quarters, our country is officially in a recession and our people are playing the price.
After more than a decade of inflationary Liberal spending and growth-killing red tape, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) released a devastating report outlining just how bad the Liberals’ credit card budgeting has been.
The PBO forecasts a budgetary deficit increase from $36.3 billion in 2024-25 to $72.0 billion in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first year – amounting to 2.2 per cent of GDP. To make matters worse, the PBO also predicts that the deficit has already deteriorated since the Liberal’s last budget update, higher by $4.6 billion per year.
Carney promised to spend less, but the PBO reported this morning that personnel expenses are expected to rise by $16.8 billion, or 24.2 per cent, from $69.2 billion in 2025-26 to $86.0 billion in 2030-31.
The PBO also found that there is only a 1 per cent chance the government will meet its fiscal anchor of reducing the deficit-to-GDP ratio every year.
Making matters even worse, the PBO expects the federal debt-to-GDP ratio to rise from 41.3 per cent in 2025-26 to 42.5 per cent in 2030-31.
All this as program spending is expected to rise to nearly $596 billion by 2031, while government revenues are expected to decline: not because of lowered taxes for Canadians, but because weaker wages and salary growth is forecasted; with the PBO adding that “the labour market has softened in line with the broader slowdown”.
The report, based on data from before Canada had even entered recession territory, already downgraded Canada’s GDP growth outlook.
Canadian families are paying the price for the economy this Liberal government created, and are now forced to make hard decisions about what they can still afford. The unemployment rate remains at nearly 7 per cent, grocery costs up 3.8 per cent year-over-year, and food bank usage at twice what it was in 2019.
That’s why Conservatives are calling for a real plan that not only gets Canada out of this recession, but unlocks our nation’s potential to rebuild hope, reward hard work and bring home powerful paycheques for our people.