Surprising No One Budget 2025 Was Passed

Why does the political class actually believe Canadians really care about the minutiae of what happens in Parliament?

I am one of those who follows politics pretty closely. So here is a brief summary of how the budget was passed:

The Liberals did not give a damn whether it passed or not. They were the only party that was poised to benefit from an election and they also knew that two of their opponents wanted desperately to avoid one.

The Bloc did not want an election either but they were not as desperate so they decided to vote against, knowing it would not come back to bite them on the ass.

Elizabeth May managed to win vague assurances from the PM, providing her with the political cover to vote for the budget.

The Conservatives and the NDP desperately wanted to avoid an election but they did not want to be seen supporting the budget either. So they took the half-assed approach of making certain that not enough of their members voted to ensure their votes did not exceed that of the Liberals and Greens. Hell, the Conservatives literally had two of their senior members hide behind curtains in the House so that they could quickly move into their seats to vote once the outcome was known.

All of this is very interesting and both amateur and professional political commentators have been in a tizzy since it happened.

Monday night, after the vote, I went to my non-political wife to tell her the results. She had seen in the news the week before that there was a confidence vote that could trigger another election. She asked me if we were going to have an election and I said no.

So, when I went to tell her I began giving her the above summary. She stopped me very early and asked "Is there going to be an election?" 

I said "No."

"Good"

"Don't you want to hear the details?"

"No."

And we have not spoken about it since.

For years my wife has reminded me that most Canadians do not care about politics to the point where some do not ever bother to vote. And those that do care tend to have already chosen a side and nothing that happens will probably change that.

So the Conservatives and the NDP twisting themselves into knots Monday night was all for naught. It was a complete waste of time.

The 2025 Canadian Federal Budget

Having read the budget I can say that it did not surprise me. It does not contain any of the poison pills that the opposition was talking about a couple of weeks ago and it is not the progressive budget it would have been if PMJT was still the head of the Canadian government. I stated in this space a few months ago that PMMC would have fit in quite well in the Progressive Conservative cabinet of Joe Clark and this budget proves it. Make no mistake that this is a progressive conservative budget.

As with all progressive conservatives, and all conservatives for that matter, they talk a good game with regard to reducing deficits but when push comes to shove they fail as much as non-conservative governments. This budget did not buck that trend. The actual number given for the deficit this year is an eye catcher but as some have noted if you account for inflation it is no bigger than the average deficit from the last 50 years. At any rate, the usual deficit hawks are loudly condemning the Federal deficit, from a Liberal government, but as usual they are dead silent about the deficits, and some rather egregious mishandling of taxpayers money, from Conservative provincial governments. I am certain that must be a coincidence.

What makes the current deficit a progressive conservative one instead of a conservative one is it is being created by investing in stuff Canada needs. They are borrowing money for big projects and the military instead of just borrowing money to transfer it to the wealthy in the form of tax breaks, which is what the last federal Conservative government did several times in their nine years in power. A progressive budget would have borrowed money to give to ordinary Canadians, who we are told are going through an "affordability crisis".

The amount of money involved is quite impressive and it cannot have anything but a positive impact on overall economic activity. That is not to say that its impact will always be positive but overall it probably will.

My biggest beef with the budget is its measures to shrink the public service. It does not make sense to plan to invest billions but also get rid of the people who will be required to make certain the money is being spent as intended. After all, when this kind of money is being talked about it is inevitable that some will wind up where is should not be. You need people to keep that to a minimum but that is harder to do if you are giving the people charged with doing that pink slips.

As well, these periodic reductions in the size of the public service have always been shell games. Certainly they reduce the size of the public service, for about a month, maybe six. Then the government departments go back to hiring more staff because they realize that they need them. Oftentimes the staff they hire back are those that left during the workforce reduction. When you add that most staff reductions take place as a result of people taking incentive packages to volunteer to leave what really happens is the government gives many employees months long paid vacations.

Really these workforce reductions are just a publicity stunt and it is disappointing that the current government is doing this. I would have thought that a former Bank Governor would be able to figure this out and approach workforce reduction if a different and sustainable way.

I cannot speak about the budget without talking about how it has discombobulated the Conservative Party. It is probably not the reason for their current troubles but it seems to have been a catalyst for the unrest in the party that was inevitable after their election loss in April and Pierre Poilievre' s refusal to step down as leader of the CPC. These things do not go way quickly so it will be interesting to see how this all finally shakes out.

For a first budget I cannot say I am surprised by it. It is certainly ambitious and if they achieve even half of what it sets out to do then it could very well be the transformative budget the Liberals are selling it as. However, there is alot of time and politics to go before we will begin to see this transformation so I would not get too excited about it yet.

I would be very surprised if this budget caused the government to fall and trigger an election. If I am the opposition parties I do not want to piss off the electorate by triggering an early election and fight said election against this budget. Stranger thing have happened so we will have to wait and see but I believe you do not need to worry about campaigning in the snow.

Will There Be An Election in the Fall of 2025?

Short answer: No.

Not so short answer: Anything is possible when it comes to politics but no.

I resolved to stop commenting on the day-to-day silliness of politics in this country awhile ago but the current speculation about a Fall election is just too ridiculous for me to ignore.

The budget will be released on November 4 and the idea it will be defeated and a snap election will occur as a result is getting some media play. This is not surprising of course. Such speculation is worth more than a few eyeballs staring at screens and newsprint and a few clicks on the internet. Or to put it another way it is good for the news business.

The crux of the speculation is the media stating the government is indicating they do not have the votes to pass the budget and the opposition has not stated whether they will support it. Very serious stuff until you apply just a little critical thinking. We have a minority government so, by definition, it does not have the votes to pass the budget on its own. As well, since the budget has not yet been released the opposition parties are not going to decide how they will vote just yet. They will posture and try to maneuver for short-term political advantage but that is to be expected and nothing extraordinary.

So when the budget is released does it mean they will decide to vote against budget and trigger an election?

Well let's look at it from the perspective of all of the parties.

The honeymoon for the Liberals is over, but only by a few weeks, but the honeymoon for Mark Carney continues. He is still the most popular and trusted politicians at the federal level. In our increasingly Americanized politics, where party leaders are the main focus over party and policy, that gives the Liberals a huge advantage. To put it another way, the Liberals do not want an election but they are not afraid of having one. None of the other parties can say the same.

The Conservative Party is lead by a leader who has been severely damaged by the events of the last 6 months. That is something that Conservatives and the media just do not seem to want to admit. Pierre Poilievre lost an election everybody believed he was going to win less than a year ago, losing his own seat in the process. Yes, his party picked up seats but they were unable to prevent the Liberals from gaining seats too, almost to the point of achieving majority government status. Mr. Poilievre is going to need time to rehabilitate his image, if he can and assuming he comes through the leadership review in January, before he challenges for the PM's chair again. He will only get one more chance to do just that so he will want much more favourable conditions before taking that chance.

The NDP is in an existential crisis. They are leaderless, beyond broke and have no party identity to speak of. An election now would result in two outcomes. They would lose what remaining seats they have and be wiped out as a political force at the federal level. Or they would pick up a few more seats, maybe getting back to official party status, but they would be so deep in debt that they would need to declare bankruptcy leading to their elimination as a political force at the federal level in a year or two. Either way, an election now would lead to their destruction. They need time to choose a leader, renew their party and make some money. An election now would prevent all three.

The Bloc cannot gain anymore seats in Quebec. They are at their high water mark. However, the Spring election showed them that they can lose seats in Quebec. So they find themselves in a position where an election will not benefit them with a larger seat count and where an election right now runs the risk of them losing seats. For the Bloc the status quo is in their best interest, at least for now.

So none of the opposition parties are really in a position to fight an election. Their risk of losing more is higher than their chances of making gains. As well, if you add the displeasure voters would have with having to go to the polls less than a year after doing so in the Spring it increases the risk. The election would be fought on who triggered the election and if they vote against the budget it would be a hard sell to say anybody else besides the opposition parties would be responsible. That would provide the Liberals the opportunity to secure the majority they just missed in April.

So in the end the government will table their budget, the opposition parties will shit on it, because that is what opposition parties do, but they will find a way not to defeat the budget in the end. The budget will probably not have any poison pills. It will be different from budgets the Trudeau Liberals used to table but not egregiously so. In the end one of the other parties will say they can support it and that will be that. My guess is it will be the Bloc.

Of course, this assumes that the opposition parties have remotely competent political strategists working for them. If not, then all bets are off.