William Watson: Do we really need a policy a day from Ottawa? 

Prime Minister Mark Carney, with the Peace Tower in the background, at a media availability announcing the appointment of Canada’s next Governor General at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa May 5, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable/Postmedia

Article content

In the appendix to Ottawa’s spring fiscal update there’s a section that starts off by saying its purpose is “to ensure transparency.” Mind you, this is a little like the carny card shark who reassures players that in his game of Three-Card Monte the cards will be completely visible at all times.

Article content

The four-page table that then follows (Table A1.15) is granular enough that it probably is complete. There’s even a special Ottawa code to indicate when tiny amounts are being considered: “A starred 0 (0*) indicates an amount of less than $0.5 million, which rounds to zero in this table.” Wouldn’t it be lovely if in your household budget you could round down amounts of $500,000 or less to zero?

Article content

Article content

Article content

I hate to be a bore on this subject but I can never read a federal fiscal update or budget — and these days what’s the difference? — without being amazed, astonished and anguished-in-my-wallet by Ottawa’s sheer busy-ness.

Article content

Article content

Between the federal budget of Nov. 4 last year and the fiscal update of April 28 this year 175 days passed. Subtract two for Christmas and New Year’s and that’s 173 days. By my count, the update appendix table lists 129 policy actions taken over those 173 days. And then the update adds 56 more — 29 in the section “Benefiting Canadians: A Canada for All” and 27 in the section “Building Canada: All for Canada.” (What’s the difference between all for Canada and Canada for all? Your guess is as good as mine.)

Article content

In any case, the total number of policy actions taken over the 173 days plus update day is 185, even if a lot are back-loaded onto the final day. In the NHL, if you score a point a game, you’re considered a real player. Maybe at all those international summits he goes to, the prime minister being able to say he heads a policy-a-day government makes him a real player, too.

Article content

Article content

The 129 actions between the budget and the update added $17 billion to the deficit through fiscal year 2030-31. (I’ve rounded down $32 million, which was fun!) That’s a little under $132 million per policy. In 1978, two physicists won the Nobel Prize for discovering the background hum of the universe. In Ottawa, the background hum of the money machines running day and night must drive the civil servants batty.

Article content

Article content

My favourite expenditures among the $17 billion are the $5.473 billion in “non-announceable measures.” A note explains that these measures whose names dare not be mentioned would include “provisions for anticipated Cabinet decisions not yet made … and funding decisions related to national security, commercial sensitivity, contract negotiations and litigation issues.” Their adding up to almost a third of the new intra-budget-and-update spending does rather reduce the update’s overall transparency score.

Article content

The big money, though, is in the update measures: a five-year net fiscal impact of $9.9 billion for “all for Canada” and $27.6 billion for “Canada for all.” And the dollars flying around — keep your eyes on the cards! — are even more of a blizzard than that. Because capital spending isn’t really counted the $25-billion Canada Strong Fund shows up with a net cost of just $6 million through 2030-31. The exact line item is “The Canada Strong Fund: Transition Office” and it’s $2 million for three years and then fades away to just $1 million. It’s actually hard to imagine Ottawa running any kind of office, transition or permanent, on just $1 million a year so, in that way, this line item is almost impressive, though the $25 billion in borrowed money the office will be transitioning into spending offsets that favourable impression.