Carneys Haushalt weist eine Lücke von 94 Milliarden US-Dollar bei den Investitionsausgaben und ein Defizit im Staatshaushalt auf: PBO

The article is scant on details. Here is the actual report: https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2526-017-S–budget-2025-issues-parliamentarians–budget-2025-enjeux-parlementaires#pb!ct

The crux of the issue, as far as I understand, is that the gov’t has adopted a new policy on capital budgeting: https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/10/modernizing-canadas-budgeting-approach.html

Under this new framework (governments love calling *everything* a „framework“, eh? jfc) they’re including measures such as corporate tax credits as capital expenditures, with the apparent justification that these measures ought to see returns for the economy. Whether or not that’s true obviously remains to be seen but it’s certainly a choice. The PBO evidently doesn’t like it:

>The Government’s new Capital Budgeting Framework adopts a definition of capital investment that expands beyond the current treatment in the Public Accounts and international practice based on the System of National Accounts (SNA), such as that adopted by the United Kingdom

The PBO seems to be relying on, basically, the idea that other countries don’t do this. That’s of course valid. And while „creative accounting“ is usually not a positive turn of phrase, „The UK wouldn’t call this a capex“ isn’t really something I think is a strong argument at this particular moment in time.

Here’s what I think is the more concerning part:

>With Budget 2025 the Government abandoned the previous fiscal anchor to reduce the federal debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term. Recall that in the 2024 FES, the Government reiterated its commitment to reducing the federal debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term, noting that ”[t]his metric is key not only for fiscal sustainability, but also to preserve Canada’s AAA credit rating, which helps maintain investors’ confidence and keeps Canada’s borrowing costs as low as possible.”

>[…]

>The federal debt-to-GDP ratio in Budget 2025 is projected to be higher compared to the 2024 FES and is no longer projected to be on a declining path over the medium term.