OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer projects Ottawa will blow past the new fiscal anchors set out in last week’s 2025 federal budget.
Interim budget officer Jason Jacques says in a new analysis of the budget that Ottawa is set to run an average deficit of $64.3 billion over the next five years — double the level set out in the federal government’s last fiscal update in late 2024.
Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney’s talk of shifting government spending to capital investment rather than operating costs, Jacques says the deeper deficits are being driven by new day-to-day program spending.
