Mark Carney’s economic update

Summary

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Front Burner: Mark Carney’s Economic Update

Date: April 29, 2026
Host: Jayme Poisson
Guest: Peter Armstrong (CBC Senior Business Correspondent)

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Overview

This episode examines Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government’s spring 2026 economic update amid a challenging and unpredictable global economic environment. Host Jayme Poisson and CBC Senior Business Correspondent Peter Armstrong break down the assumptions underlying the update, the government’s plans for affordability, the introduction of a new sovereign wealth fund, efforts to boost investment, and criticisms about the lack of decisive action and deliverables.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Economic Assumptions and Revenue Underestimation

• Budget Based on Conservative Oil Price Forecasts:
  • The government forecasts oil at $73/barrel for 2026, while current prices are around $99. This creates a “cushion” of unexpected revenue if prices stay high, which can either shrink the deficit or fund new programs.
    • "For every day that that happens, for every million barrels of oil that's sold, that gap grows... they'll have this sort of windfall where they can say, oh, look, we did better than expected." — Peter Armstrong [02:10]
• Unpredictability of Economic Forecasting:
  • Global turmoil, such as the US and Israel's war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, makes predictions extremely difficult.
    • "It's an unenviable task. And I'm much happier that I'm sitting here talking to you rather than up on a podium trying to explain this to Canadians." — Peter Armstrong [05:51]

2. Affordability Measures and Public Perception

• Few New Measures in the Update:
  • The update is “clearly an update, not a budget,” with incremental measures such as workforce training and limited affordability relief (e.g., reduced CPP payments). There’s no broad new aid for rising living costs.
    • "It's not like a budget where there's sweeping measures to try to bring down costs for Canadian households." — Peter Armstrong [07:45]
• Gas Tax Cut and Corporate Profiteering:
  • Despite the gas tax cut, rising prices and perceived corporate profiteering have neutralized its impact.
    • "It's now a buck 80 today, average gas price per litre in Toronto. Where is this big tax cut?" — Peter Armstrong [09:53]
• No Windfall Tax or Concrete Sovereign Wealth Funding Plan:
  • The much-discussed sovereign wealth fund lacks specifics on funding sources, and there's no excess-profits or windfall tax proposal.

3. Broader Economic Forces & Trade-Offs

• Benefit and Risk of High Oil Prices:
  • High prices benefit GDP and resource provinces like Alberta, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Saskatchewan, but increase costs for consumers and businesses. Prolonged high prices eventually hurt more than help through “demand destruction.”
    • "If you get past 18 months of this, that benefit… gets outweighed by the demand destruction... that will eventually drag down the economy." — Peter Armstrong [11:36]

4. Looming Debt Costs

• Escalating Public Debt Charges:
  • Servicing public debt is expected to become the second largest federal expense by 2030 ($80.9 billion), constraining fiscal choices.
    • "Transfer to the elderly… is number one. And then public debt charges is very quickly number two." — Peter Armstrong [14:16]

5. Sovereign Wealth Fund: Canada Strong Fund

• Structure and Purpose Remain Unclear:
  • Intended to co-invest with the private sector in “nation-building projects,” the fund's sources and operations are still undetermined. Armstrong questions its necessity, noting Canada’s issue is regulatory risk, not capital access.
    • "The amount of things we don't know vastly outnumber the amount of things we do know about this." — Peter Armstrong [16:43]

6. Foreign Investment Summit & Privatization Fears

• $1 Trillion Investment Goal & September Summit:
  • Carney plans a major investor summit in Toronto, targeting both foreign sovereign wealth funds and private firms, pitching Canadian projects—including possibly airports.
    • *"Alternative models of ownership" (re: airports) discussed, widely interpreted as a euphemism for privatization.
    • "Nobody's saying, although alternative models of ownership does sound like a euphemism for privatization." — Jayme Poisson [21:14]
• National Sovereignty Concerns:
  • Fears voiced (notably by figures like Jim Balsillie) that increased foreign investment may compromise Canadian economic sovereignty, leave tech talent feeling unsupported, and erode national control over key infrastructure and emerging industries.
    • "That, Jamie, I think, is an existential threat to the economy of this country. We need to do more to make those people… build their companies here." — Peter Armstrong [24:32]

7. Criticism: A Lack of Delivery and Urgency

• Perceived Government Paralysis:
  • Commentators like Andrew Coyne note the update is insufficient (“tinkering around the edge”), lacking the bold moves required to fix sluggish growth and deteriorating public finances.
    • "There are big changes that are needed... There's really none of that in this budget. There are tinkering around the edge." — Peter Armstrong, quoting Andrew Coyne [25:46]
  • Frustration among supporters and business leaders is growing over the lack of “deliverables”—concrete projects and visible progress.
    • "I like the plan, but where's the action?" — Peter Armstrong [28:00]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Budget Forecasting:
  • "They don't write a lot of folk songs about the bureaucrats in the finance department that have to try to forecast their way through this... but it's an incredibly difficult task." — Peter Armstrong [05:41]
• On Political Use of Conservative Forecasts:
  • "They'd underestimate growth and then they'd be surprised by how well growth came in. And that would give them a little cushion that they could play around with. And they used that as a real kind of political tool." — Peter Armstrong [02:47]
• On Inflation Relief Measures:
  • "Measures that the Carney government has made to try and ease the financial pain... Canadians are hardly feeling the benefits of the gas tax suspension." — Jayme Poisson [09:25]
• On Privatization and Public Services:
  • "Although I do feel like when we privatize transportation infrastructure in the past, it hasn't exactly resulted in better service for Canadians." — Jayme Poisson [22:34]
• On the Innovation Economy & Brain Drain:
  • "There are too many regulatory burdens, the tax burden's too high... they don't feel like this is a place that is really supportive of entrepreneurship and growth in Canada." — Peter Armstrong [24:10]
• On Action vs. Rhetoric:
  • "The one through line to them is that this government has done a really effective job of saying all the right things … but that we haven't seen enough delivery of those promises…" — Peter Armstrong [26:19]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:30] — Economic assumptions and oil price forecasts
• [03:58] — Difficulties of predicting economic future amid war and instability
• [06:29] — What’s new in the economic update?
• [09:25] — Affordability relief, gas tax cut, and calls for windfall taxes
• [14:13] — Rising debt charges and implications for future spending
• [16:10] — Introduction of the sovereign wealth fund (Canada Strong Fund)
• [19:50] — Carney’s foreign investment pitch and September summit
• [21:14] — Privatization debate around airports
• [23:15] — National sovereignty and the risks of foreign investment
• [25:31] — Criticisms about lack of urgency and calls for real action
• [28:05] — Wrap-up: Need for deliverables and tangible progress

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Tone and Language Notes

The conversation is candid, accessible, and laced with humor and real-world examples. Armstrong provides context with historical references and personal anecdotes. While detailed and analytical at times, Poisson’s questions ensure clarity for a general audience, and the discussion stays grounded in the concerns of everyday Canadians.

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For listeners and non-listeners alike, this episode offers a critical look at Canada’s latest economic update: reserved and cautious in its projections, thin on new affordability measures, ambitious in rhetoric about long-term investment and transformation, but facing mounting pressure to move from promises to action as volatility and public frustration increase.

Transcript

[A]

With VRBoCare, help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.

[B]

This is a CBC podcast.

[A]

We are building fast. We are building Canadian. We are building sustainably. Hey, everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson. With an extremely unpredictable economic backdrop, Prime Minister Mark Carney's government gave an update yesterday on what's going on with our country's finances, what they want to spend on, and how they think Canada can weather the turbulence. Here to break it all down for us is Peter Armstrong. He's the CBC senior business correspondent. Peter, great to have you.

[B]

Oh, Jamie, is it ever nice to be back on your show.

[A]

Always a pleasure. So I know you like to flip to the back of a budget document when you get one. Yes, I do know this about you. To the appendix, I guess, Right. To see what economic assumptions the document is built on. And when you did that today, I'm assuming that you did do that today, what did you see?

[B]

I did. And the reason I do it, Jamie, is because, like all of the words in the front try to tell a story. And I think it's an important story that like my colleagues here in the Ottawa bureau do such an amazing job of deciphering the politics of it. What I try to do, just to differentiate myself, if nothing else, is I go to the back and I dig through the annexes because there's a different story being told in all the economic charts and tables. And one of the most important ones starts with the economic assumptions that this budget is built on, that any budget, a spring update or a full budget, whatever it is, they, they solicit from the private sector a series of forecasts. What do they think is going to happen with GDP over the budget horizon? What do they think is going to happen with inflation or unemployment? And in this case, what do you think is going to happen with the price of oil? So the first number I looked at was, well, what do they think is going to happen with the price of oil? And in the forecast, it says it expects, and this is the entire budget is built on this, that they expect that the price of oil in 2026 will be $73 a barrel. Now, anybody who's been following anything about what's going on in the world knows that it's way higher than that now. And the expectation is that it will come down. It's, it's about $99 a barrel right now. And that means that what they've done is They've allowed this budget to be built and say, well, you know, everything's going to chug along and, and growth is going to be pretty tepid. It's not going to slip into recession and it's going to be a little bit better than expected. And they said 5,000 times that Canada has the second best growth in the G7. But what it does is it underestimates the amount of revenue the government's going to get from all that oil. Right. When oil producers sell oil at $99 a barrel instead of $73, that gap is considerable. And for every day that that happens, for every million barrels of oil that's sold, that gap grows. And so what it means is they have this kind of cushion, a windfall, if you will, of money that they'll be allowed to play around with when they sit down to table the next budget. They'll have this sort of windfall where they can say, oh, look, we did better than expected. We can bring down the deficit or we can spend on something else. But it really reminded me, Jamie, of the budgets I used to cover when Paul Martin was Finance Minister and Jean Chretien was Prime Minister and when Paul Martin was Prime Minister as well, where they, they'd underestimate growth and then they'd be surprised by how well growth came in. And that would give them a little cushion that they could play around with. And they used that as a real kind of political tool.

[A]

I mean. Right. But I guess also other unpredictable things could happen here because when they wrote their first budget back in the fall, I'm not sure anybody anticipated that the US and Israel were going to war with Iran and that I think importantly, Iran would be able to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz and choke global trade. So, like, how can one even begin in this moment to predict where the economy is going, let alone kind of trust those predictions?

[B]

I think that's not just a fair point. I think it's a really important point. And it's important to remind people it's not like the government cooked up these numbers and said, well, we're going to think the price of oil is going to be $73 a barrel. They use the private sector forecast, so they have, you know, they have good reason to have used that. And of course, you would way rather underestimate revenue than overestimate it and come in wrong and end up on the wrong side of that balance. Governments have all landed in that predicament, and it's a pretty lousy one. And the, the Theme of uncertainty has been embedded in. In budgeting and in budget forecasting for man, what, like six years now, right? Like it is. It is the predominant feature on the economic landscape of uncertainty, whether it was just tariffs or. Now it's tariffs and an unpredictable war in Iran without a clear path out of it. And what does that mean for global oil prices? Even if the war ended today, we'd be months before we get back to anything even approximating normal. You know, I wrote in my newsletter this week that, you know, they don't write a lot of folk songs about the bureaucrats in the finance department that have to try to forecast their way through this, and probably rightly so, I don't think it would exactly be a hit, but it does speak to. They've got a really tough job. It's an incredibly difficult task to try to think, okay, what is this snapshot today? What does that tell us? What story does that tell us about the economy? And how do we sort of use that, overlay it over what we think is going to happen in the future to try to come up with a plan for what we can do in this country to make the economy stronger, to. To protect households through a really difficult time, to grow the economy in ways that we haven't tried for many, many years in terms of diversifying and doing new things. It's an unenviable task. And I'm much happier that I'm sitting here talking to you rather than up on a podium trying to explain this to Canadians.

[A]

Let's talk about that plan a little bit more. Like talk about what actually was in the update today. Carney's team had hinted before this budget that there would be new measures aimed at helping out with affordability issues, which is obviously front and center for Canadians right now. And did we see anything new in that department, or was it all just things that we already knew about?

[B]

We saw some things, but we didn't see a lot. And that was kind of expected in that, you know, whenever I come to Ottawa to cover these budgets and then these, you know, they do these fall economic updates, and now it's a spring economic update because we switched that around. There's always a question in my mind about how much of this is a mini budget and how much of it is just an update. And different prime ministers at different times, they've used these in different ways. This was so clearly an update. Like, there is new spending in it, to be sure, quite a bit of new spending, in fact. But it isn't a budget. It isn't where they're like, okay, here's the plan, here's how we're going to do it going forward. I spoke off the record with some government officials leading up to this, who tried to frame it as like a bridge between where we are now and where the. The things the government is trying to do will actually work. Right. And if you think about what the government's been trying to do writ large, not just in this document, though, it's here, too. They've got these big plans to diversify the Canadian economy and change how steel is sold in Canada and these really big working on the Port of Montreal, these massive changes. But those are going to take years to actually show up in the data and actually impact your life and my life and the people that will work there. And so what the messaging was heading into this is they're going to use this economic update to try to bridge that gap and try to do things around training workforce. And we saw a lot of that. We saw efforts to try to get young people, but anybody really into the trades, because, man, we're going to need skilled trades. We're going to need, you know, trades workers throughout the country to execute so much of this. We've got to do that work. And that's in here. But it's not like a budget where there's like, sweeping measures to try to bring down costs for Canadian households. There are these little measures that they can point out and say, well, we did that. We did that. They brought down the cost you pay to cover your CPP pension payments. But there just wasn't that sense that you get out of a budget where they're like, here's what we're going to try to do to affect your life. They really tried to frame on that side of it. Hey, this is just an update. We're just trying to give you a sense of where we're at and, and sort of move the ball further down the field a little bit towards that place where the economy is stronger, things are working better, and that benefit is going to accrue and grow for every Canadian household and every Canadian worker. I'll leave it to my political colleagues to decipher whether they accomplish that or not. But some think you did and some think they didn't.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I heard Avi Lewis on power and politics saying that, you know, Canadians are hardly feeling the benefits of the gas tax suspension, for example. These measures that the Carney government has made to try and ease the financial pain that regular people are feeling.

[B]

You know, We've seen, we've seen a tax, a tax cut for gas. Right. Which we said at the moment would be absorbed by price gouging corporations instantly. It's Now a buck 80 today, average gas price per liter in Toronto. Where is this big tax cut?

[A]

And he suggested that the government should like, tax corporations profiting from skyrocketing prices of oil and then reinvest that for Canadians. I think he mentioned specifically his pitch for publicly funded grocery stores. And was there anything about, you know, excess profits in this update, anything like that?

[B]

No. And in fact, you know, with, with the talk of the sovereign wealth fund leading into this, there's a lot of question, where are they going to draw that money from? And one of the concerns among industry was, well, is the government going to introduce some kind of a windfall tax that will draw profit out of those industries and use that fund, the sovereign wealth fund? We didn't get very many answers on how the wealth fund is going to be funded. Uh, but none of that showed up. But on the flip side to Javi Lewis's point, you know, the, the pain out there is very real. You hear people talking about it every single day. You hear your friends and neighbors and family members and, and it's not just, you know, I, I think we're first drawn to the price of oil and what it means for gasoline at the pump, for me and my car to drive my kids to art class or whatever. Uh, and that, that matters. That is enormously important. And it's a huge political calculation. But economically, I think you have to think about how that's actually playing out for businesses that need diesel fuel to power their fleet to deliver their products, and they need heating fuel to power their, their factory or their warehouse. There's a weird needle that needs to be thread. You know, I talk about higher oil prices mean oil producers in Canada, specifically Newfoundland, Labrador, Saskatchewan and Alberta, they'll do better. They'll see higher profits.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's good for the Canadian economy. Right. That will see GDP growth rise. Okay, full stop. On the flip side of that, even drivers in Alberta and Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador are feeling the pain of this. And as that pain drags on, that balance starts to shift. And the accrued benefit of the higher oil prices for the Canadian economy get outweighed by the demand destruction that happens because people can't afford to drive their cars and businesses can't afford to ship their goods. And you know, you start to see that impact. And so if you get past 18 months of this, that that benefit to the economy gets outweighed by the demand destruction that's happening that will eventually drag down the economy. And so there's all these different sort of countervailing forces at play and trying to figure those out. As I say, that's, that's why I'm sure glad I'm not in politics and I just get to sit here and tear it all apart.

[A]

Do you get the sense though, that this government is live to that, that they're, that they're really thinking about it?

[B]

I, I do. And, and I think, you know, that's why we heard things like Canada is

[A]

the second fastest growing economy in the G7. We're growing almost twice as much as Germany, almost twice as much as Japan.

[B]

Because they, what they want to say is, look, it's not. They can cut the excise tax on, on gasoline. It's a gesture. It doesn't cover the increased cost at all. So they're aware of it. But I think they don't want to take too much action now because the action they're trying to take is to sort of turn the economy to deal with the first crisis, which was the tariffs and the uncertainty and the business investment that was being sucked out of this country because of what's happening with the United States. Now you got to add in this whole new layer of, well, how does an energy, a global energy crisis unlike anything we've ever seen before, literally anything we've ever seen before, how does that layer on top of all that uncertainty and we don't know, the only thing we can say for certain is that we do know it'll be bad. And so what measures can they take today to offset that? I mean, there's really not a ton that this incarnation of a liberal government is willing to do right now. But as I say, that's why it gets really interesting that they'll have this little windfall as a result of the underestimating of oil prices that they'll be able to do something with in the fall. Will that be more targeted approach to households and businesses? Will that be new programs or will that be. Will the, the moment of the, you know, the, the feeling of the moment shift to, well, you got to start dragging that, that deficit down, right? Like the, the, the public debt charges, Jamie, are. The numbers are bananas by 2030, number

[A]

three, right line item, third, the third

[B]

most spending on that, it becomes the second biggest spending. It's an $80.9 billion by 2030. And so like this year, it's either second or third and it holds in second place. It's like transfer to the elderly, which has always been the biggest expenditure in any Canadian budget, is number one. And then public debt charges is very quickly number two. And it is an enormous sum of money, $80.9 billion by 2030.

[A]

Right. And this government's going to have to make choices with this windfall. What are they? What are they going to do about it?

[B]

What are they going to do?

[A]

What are they going to do with it in the moment? Yeah, A Better Help ad. Hold on one second. I just need to. What if you had a room where no one interrupts, no notifications, no expectations, just space to talk with? BetterHelp therapy happens in a space that's yours. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. Big surprises could be waiting in Cash Avalanche Casino Slot. Every spin brings the chance for exciting rewards. Collect sweepstakes coins, join spin challenges and explore colorful themes. With frequent updates and smooth gameplay, the fun keeps going. Download Cash Avalanche Casino Slot on the App Store and claim your bonus. You mentioned the sovereign wealth fund and just maybe for people listening, if you could just explain what this is in kind of layman's terms. Carney announced it in the lead up to this update earlier this week.

[B]

The Canada Strong Fund will invest alongside the private sector in nation building projects to create wealth for Canadians today and our kids tomorrow. And if you have a bit of extra money, we'll make it easy for you to invest in the fund to help build Canada Strong for all. The sovereign wealth fund is a couple of things. Traditionally. Traditionally it's a fund made up of excess profits of surplus revenue. Many countries that are blessed with natural resources, like Norway, have sovereign wealth funds. Canada hasn't had one until now. So the Norwegians used it. They took the massive profits they had in the 80s and they used it to diversify away from oil. But they invest exclusively abroad. They invest none of that money in Norway. And the idea is to try to use that money to expand the way that country is drawing power and money and investment from into the world. This fund is far more focused on Canada, on domestic investments. We don't know to what extent. I mean, the amount of times I'm about to say, I don't know, maybe put me on a clock because I think there's going to be a bunch of we don't know how they're going to raise the money because we certainly don't have a surplus to draw from. We don't know where they're going to spend that money and how they say they want to spend some or a lot of it in Canada, but we don't know what percentage, we don't know how it's going to be run. Usually these are like an arm's length organization that oversees these. How's that going to work? They say they're going to have this like transition organization that's going to explore all that. But the amount of things we don't know vastly outnumber the amount of things we do know about this. And the biggest question that economists keep asking about this and I think it's, it's, it's the question I was told to ask about basically everything. What problem is, is it trying to solve for? And within that you have to think, well, you've got the Business Development bank and you've got the Maple 8, the, the big pension funds in Canada with the CPP being the main one. You've got the, the Infrastructure Bank. What is, what is this thing going to do that's different from that? And what problem are they all struggling to solve? I don't think at its core the problem Canada has in terms of building big things is access to capital. It's that the capital that it has access to is wary that there's too much regulatory burden, that it's too tricky and risky and that you can go, go spend hundreds of millions of dollars and the government might cancel it in the end and say you can't go ahead. That's the problem that needs to be solved for. And I don't see how any of these solve for that.

[A]

To that point I was listening to labor economist Jim Stanford express concern that in the worst case scenario this could be used to subsidize private projects that I guess cancel their own two feet. But I think, yeah, importantly, don't want to take the risk. Right. And just I guess that's the point that you're trying to make here.

[B]

It's exactly the point I'm trying to make and Jim has always makes it better than me.

[A]

You know. I wanted to ask you about another piece of news that came out in the, the kind of lead up to this update and that was Carney seeking out foreign investment. He wants to get 1 trillion in total investment in Canada over the next five years. As part of that, he's invited I think like a hundred of the world's biggest investors to a summit in Toronto this September. Including other countries sovereign wealth funds like Singapore's and also private investment firms like BlackRock and just what's the pitch here and how does it fit into this larger context that you and I have been discussing today?

[B]

So the whole idea of both the sovereign wealth fund and this idea to invest capital, right? So they invited a hundred of the biggest investment bodies, some of them sovereign wealth funds, some of them just investment firms like BlackRock, for example, the hundred of the biggest top investors around the world to come to Toronto in September for a sort of like a pitch session. One somebody described it to me as like an Investor Day presentation where it's like Canada Inc. And they can say here's how we can, you should be investing in Canada. And there's been as many questions about how that's going to work as there are around the sovereign wealth fund. About, like what are you asking them to invest in, what specific projects? And when I was doing some reporting around that summit that's going to take place in September, one of the questions that kept getting asked by people abroad was whether Canada's airports were going to be something that was going to be on the table in terms of something we could, they could invest in. And so I was interested to see on page 57 of the Budget for those following at home that it has this line about airports. And it says the government is also assessing opportunities to unlock the full value of airports in support of investments in Canada's long term growth, including through alternative models of ownership. This work will be advanced with the input of the airport authorities and other stakeholders, including airlines and local governments. Now Jamie, you will point out the word privatization isn't used once in that sentence.

[A]

Nobody's saying, although alternative models of ownership does sound like a euphemism for privatization.

[B]

It sure does. And so I think one of the really interesting things, when this investment summit happens and as we get more information about the sovereign wealth fund and as we look ahead to the next federal budget that'll probably come out in November, I think those kinds of questions. But what's on the table? What are we actually looking at? Are Canadians okay with that? How do we feel about that? What kind of money would we get? Is there, you know, somebody in the lockup today was musing that maybe you sell an airport and you use that money to cede the sovereign wealth fund. Maybe that's how they're coming about it. You don't have people speculating like that when you actually provide the answers. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's, it's the kind of thing people are asking. And as I say, it's the kind of stuff I was being asked about just around the summit when. When we were looking for a sense of who's coming and why are they coming, what are they looking to invest in? That was a question that just kept coming up.

[A]

I mean, if that airport stuff is moving ahead, like, I don't know if Canadians would be okay with that. I feel like when we privatized, I think there are.

[B]

That maybe work really well. There are parts, you know, what part of the process of landing in a major international airport in Canada is good? What part?

[A]

It's not great. Although I do feel like when we privatize transportation infrastructure in the past, it hasn't exactly resulted in better service for Canadians. Right. I'm thinking about the railways. CN owns the railways and freight was prioritized, leaving passengers to wait more. I mean, I know people probably feel like their experience at airports can't get worse, but I'm sure, I'm sure it can.

[B]

We do not lack for lessons to be learned from the past. The question is whether we will choose to learn from them or not.

[A]

Former BlackBerry founder Jim Balsali was on the show earlier this week. And as you know. Well, I know you've talked to Jim lots of times. One of his big things is that we are giving up too much of our sovereignty to foreign interests and investors. And have you heard that concern around this pitch to foreign investors? Like, have you been hearing that concern?

[B]

I have been hearing that concern, and not just from him, who he makes a very good case. I've heard it from a bunch of people and I've heard other sort of parts of that argument made in the last couple of days from people in what they call the innovation economy. So people that are more on the tech side or the innovation, the entrepreneurship side, really, of the economy. The concerns there are that twofold One, will we allow foreign investment to come in and sweep in and just sort of, as Jim says, take over too much of what is now under Canadian sovereignty? That's one concern. The other is how much as they repurpose how we think about investment capital from the government and investment capital from abroad. Are we focusing on the, quote, unquote, old industries? Obviously, we've had a big turnaround in how we think about oil and gas and energy and energy infrastructure in general, which I think is a net positive for Canada, to be sure. But there is. We do need to really focus. And, you know, there are a bunch of organizations out there right now that have done a really good job of highlighting the dangers that We've seen in too many Canadian entrepreneurs, specifically tech entrepreneurs, being drawn out of Canada to go work in Silicon Valley or go work abroad in a bunch of different places, that there's too many regulatory burdens, the tax burdens too high. They just don't feel whether those things are necessarily true or not. They don't feel like this is a place that is is really supportive of entrepreneurship and growth in Canada. And that, Jamie, I think, is an existential threat to the economy of this country. We need to do more to make those people that graduate from the amazing Canadian universities that we have some of the best skilled talent in the world. What are we doing to encourage them to stay and build their companies here rather than go to the United States or Europe or wherever to build the companies there?

[A]

And just coming out of this update, you certainly heard from people like Andrew Coyne, Global Mail columnist Andrew Coyne, who said that this update and what the government is doing right now is not nearly enough to address what you're just

[B]

talking about, whether you're talking about our deteriorating public finances, both federal and provincial, or whether you're talking about our very slow economic growth where we now celebrate, if we get 1.7% of growth per year, that's a third of our rate in the 50s and 60s. There are big changes that are needed if we're going to address either those fronts. There's really none of that in this budget. There are tinkering around the edge.

[A]

Talk to me a little bit about people who feel like this is like a sleeper update and this government needs to move much faster and go much harder here.

[B]

So the most common criticism I've heard of Carney and I hear it from like investment people. I heard from small businesses, I heard from tech people, and I hear it from global energy giants. The one through line to them is that this government has done a really effective job of saying all the right things and speaking to the concerns Canadians of all stripes have about where the economy has been and where it needs to get to, but that we haven't seen enough delivery of those promises, that the talk is great. And even people that I'm a little surprised by that would agree with a liberal prime minister, adamantly agreeing with him, but really worried that we haven't seen enough to show that change is actually happening and that what they feel this government really needs to do is get some wins in a win column and show some deliverables, that Here are the 10 projects that we approved that are done now or that are shovels in the ground now that are creating economic benefits. And yes, some of that is long term, but. But you. You do need to, at some point, be able to hold something up into the frame and say, here's what we did. Here's how this worked.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Here's why we need to continue doing it this way.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, they need something for all of these people in the trades that they want to train to do, for sure.

[B]

And that's going to be a balance, and it's going to be a tricky one. But they have the support people. I'm surprised by that. They support a liberal government. People that are not traditional liberals, in my conversations with them that are saying, I support this, I like this. I like the plan. But increasingly over the last few months, five months or so, they've been saying, I like the plan, but where's the. Where's the action? We got to.

[A]

Got to see some action that feels like a good place for us to end. Peter, thank you so much for this and thank you for also making this really tangible. I'm pleased that we did not, I think, even talk about debt to GDP ratio, which.

[B]

Oh, you want to talk about debt, gdp? I could go. We can do another whole half hour.

[A]

Yeah. I do not. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

[B]

It's my great pleasure. Thank you.

[A]

All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

[B]

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