Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is not committing to meeting the $40.1-billion deficit target she set for the government last year.
Freeland says she expects the fall economic statement, which she will present on Dec. 16, will show a declining debt-to-GDP ratio.
When asked if she would also meet her deficit target, Freeland wouldn’t answer, saying she chose her words “carefully.”
Donald Trump has jumped straight into action as the defender of dollar power, training some heavy fire on an enemy that barely even exists.
The president-elect’s recent salvo against the BRICs group of emerging economies was a signal he’ll move aggressively to protect the greenback’s status as the world’s premier money. Any nation that abandons it can forget about selling anything to the US and find another “sucker” to trade with, Trump said.
The world’s debt has soared to an unprecedented $323 trillion, surging by $12 trillion in the first three quarters of 2024, according to a new report from the Institute of International Finance (IIF).
The sharp rise comes as falling borrowing costs and a resurgence of investor risk appetite drive increased lending, reported Reuters. However, this rapid escalation highlights vulnerabilities in global financial systems, especially as governments continue to operate under significant budget deficits.
In an era where the cost of living continually surges, the pursuit of affordable groceries has evolved into a financial battleground for many Canadians.
Recent investigations by intrepid reporters in Quebec and Ontario have uncovered a revelation that may surprise some: dollar stores, most notably Dollarama, provide identical non-perishable products to regular grocery stores but at significantly lower prices, often falling within the 30% to 75% range.
Canada’s top economists are expecting the Bank of Canada to deliver another outsized rate hike on Wednesday in its continued fight against decades-high inflation.
The central bank is expected to raise the policy rate by 50 or 75 basis points as part of the Bank’s strategy of front-loading rate hikes, but comes at a time when recession calls are growing louder. Some economists are expecting the Bank to take its foot off the gas following this rate decision.
“The issue is debt cancellation might reduce the racial wealth gap between two rich doctors, a rich black doctor and rich white doctor, but it actually widens the racial wealth gap overall, because disproportionately the people who hold student debt that went to college are white, and the 87% of Americans that didn’t go to college are disproportionately people of color,” Marc Goldwein, who also serves a senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told CNN host Poppy Harlow.
Canada’s real estate bubble went from a small localized problem in pricey cities to a country-wide failure. Excessively long use of low rates from the Bank of Canada (BoC) drove tens of thousands of excess home sales over the past two years. Now that rates are rising, purchase volumes have suddenly cratered and prices are beginning to come back down to normal. Just how many excess sales did the BoC stimulate? Let’s crunch the numbers, but first we should explain the how and why monetary policy influences sales.
In the 2015 federal election campaign, the Liberals said they would run “small” deficits for three years, before returning to a balanced budget.
That promise was broken almost immediately, with the deficits far exceeding what the Liberals had promised, and with no plan whatsoever to return to balance.
Then, the Liberals responded to the covid-19 pandemic by pushing for draconian lockdowns, while extending support programs long-beyond the initial crisis.
The result was the largest budget deficit in Canadian history, and long-term projections of red ink as far as the eye can see.
As the Bank of Canada (BoC) continues to raise interest rates, the majority of Canadians are losing confidence in the central bank’s ability to deal with the inflation crisis.
Justin Trudeau can take solace from the fact that inflation probably won’t get much worse than June’s reading of 8.1%. The Canadian leader’s political problems, however, are just beginning.
Statistics Canada said Wednesday that annual consumer price gains hit their highest since January 1983, a week after the Bank of Canada surprised markets by hiking interest rates by a full percentage point to beat down inflationary pressures.
Those back-to-back signals make clear that the overheating economy no longer needs the large budget deficits that have characterized Trudeau’s reign as prime minister.
More than half of Ontarians believe they’ll be priced out of the city or town where they currently live, a new survey has found.
Conducted by Right at Home Realty, the research shows that housing affordability “continues to be a major concern” for those who do not own a home in the province.
This may be the most important thread I ever make. Big picture stuff about the major global collapse that is coming.
I will try to help you understand why the future is not what we’re hoping for. It’s worse than most can imagine.
Since the Trudeau government came to power in 2015, federal spending has increased by 82 per cent from $248.7 billion under Stephen Harper to $452.3 billion in the current fiscal year.
During that period, inflation has been just 18.7 per cent. Population growth has been 6.5 per cent, meaning federal spending under Trudeau has far outstripped both the rising cost of living and the increase in population.
Revenues have outstripped inflation and population growth, too – by 46 per cent – but not nearly as much as spending has increased.
