QUESTION PERIOD — Finance
Fiscal Transparency
June 4, 2025
Senator Gold, your government is planning the largest debt issuance in Canadian history, surpassing even the issues held during the pandemic, at a time when foreign investors are fleeing our bond market and borrowing costs are already surging. Yields on 10-year bonds have jumped more than 50 basis points since April, yet the government refuses to table a budget until the fall, months after the fiscal year began.
Investors, analysts and ratings agencies are all sounding the alarm: lack of transparency, fiscal uncertainty and an overreliance on foreign demand that is now vanishing. Canadians are staring down higher mortgage rates, weaker investment and mounting national debt, all without a credible fiscal anchor in sight.
Why is this government risking Canada’s financial stability by issuing record debt into a shaky bond market with no plan and no budget, while foreign investors pull back and confidence collapses?
Thank you for your question and for underlining the importance of proper transparent and responsible management of our economic affairs in this turbulent time. The government has been very clear that it will introduce a budget in the fall.
To have introduced anything even in form resembling a budget now — with all the uncertainty and changes happening literally day by day in terms of the tariff structures to which we are being subjected, the developments in the bond market caused largely by actions in the United States, the tariff policy in particular — would be an irresponsible and meaningless exercise.
The Prime Minister was elected with a mandate to guide Canada and help transform our economy in this difficult time, and Canadians can expect that this will remain a priority and a focus and can look forward, in the fall, to getting a proper and accurate picture through a budget when the information and the situation stabilize.
Leader, the longer the government hides its budget, the worse this gets. Bond markets are reacting now, not in the fall. Foreign creditors are watching and withdrawing.
Does the government seriously expect Canadians to believe it can borrow record amounts, delay accountability and still protect our economic future? Or is this delay just a cover-up for spending plans it knows the markets and Canadians cannot afford?
Thank you for your question. As I have said, it would be irresponsible and misleading to provide, at this juncture, a projection; it would be an irresponsible and misleading exercise to do other than what the government is doing now, which is to work assiduously with premiers, leaders in business and industry and Indigenous leaders to chart a course forward.
As we all know from the meetings that have been held and will be held, this government is focused and will remain focused on economic matters in the best interests of Canadians.
