Mark Carney promises $129 billion in new spending as Liberals unveil full election platform

It also revealed new details of what they would do if they win the April 28 election, including a pledge to provide $20,000 for in vitro fertilization treatment. 

“Our plan gets government spending under control because the government has been spending too much, and Canada has been investing too little,” Carney said at a campaign event in Whitby on Saturday. 

He also stressed the “chaos” of the American trade war with Canada, declaring the direction of the U.S. under U.S. President Donald Trump a “tragedy” that Canada must confront with a solid plan. 

“Canadians don’t just want to resist the U.S. Canadians are determined to win,” Carney said. 

He pointed to the Bank of Canada’s worst-case scenario that an estimated, long-lasting global trade war could cause $125 billion in damage to the Canadian economy. “That is an enormous number,” said Carney, a former governor of the central bank.

“But it’s small compared to what we can give ourselves back … What we can create is $900 billion by ourselves. That is $20,000 on net for every single Canadian — in five years,” he said.

The platform commits about $129.23 billion in new spending over four years. It also projects almost $52 billion in new revenue and “savings” during that time, almost half of which — $20 billion — is expected in the current fiscal year from the payment of Canadian countertariffs on American imports.

The countertariff revenue expectation is lower than the $24 billion previously estimated when the first three phases of Canadian duties on $94.8 billion worth of American products was unveiled. A campaign official said that’s because Canadian consumers are likely to change their buying and importing habits as a result of higher prices on American goods. It also does not mean that a Mark Carney government would not expand countertariffs beyond the current level. 

The biggest chunk of new spending is for lost revenues from the Liberals’ promise to lower income taxes by one percentage point for the lowest income tax bracket. The platform projects that will cost almost $22 billion by 2028-29. Another $8.1 billion in revenue will be lost from cancelling the Justin Trudeau government’s increase to capital gains taxes. 

The platform also commits around $18 billion in new spending on defence, including through increased pay for the Canadian Armed Forces and following through on previous plans to buy new heavy icebreakers, submarines, drones and “Canadian-made” early warning aircraft. The plan speeds up existing spending plans in a push to hit Canada’s long-standing commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to spend the equivalent at least 2 per cent of economic output on defence by 2030, instead of the current goal of 2032. 

“There is a huge defence spend in this plan,” Carney said, when asked about how NATO leaders are planning to increase the alliance’s target beyond 2 per cent. 

“It is possible … that we will need to do more,” he said, pointing to Canada’s willingness to participate in a peacekeeping coalition if the war in Ukraine ends. “We will do what’s necessary to protect this country.” 

Another major focus is housing, with a promise to put $11.8 billion over four years to support builders of pre-fabricated homes through a new Build Canada Homes fund. The Liberals would also spend $6 billion by 2028-29 to cover new housing infrastructure like water, power lines, and wastewater systems to municipalities that cut housing development charges. 

The platform also details $6.8 billion in spending to support “nation-building” projects like high speed rail, $5 billion to fund infrastructure to expand trade to other countries, and $4 billion to “construct and renovate” health care infrastructure. 

Under the plan, a Carney government would continue running budget deficits of $62.34 billion in the current fiscal year, declining to $47.8 billion in 2028-29.

The Liberals, however, want to change the way those deficits are calculated, by splicing out government operational spending from capital spending. The platform defines capital spending as “anything that builds an asset” owned by the federal government, another level of government, or a private company. It includes spending on machinery, equipment, land and buildings, and government incentives for private investment, the platform said. 

Earlier this year, Carney vowed to balance the government operating budget in three years, while using capital spending to spur the economy.

However, the Liberal platform shows that would be achieved in a fourth fiscal year, with the operating budget pegged at more than $9 billion in deficit in 2025-26, and showing a surplus of about $222 million four years from now, in 2028-29.

On Saturday, Carney claimed the new money is not “spending” but “investing” that will prompt private sector investment to grow the economy. 

A Carney government would cap — not cut — the size of the public service, and ensure program expenses grow less than 2 per cent each year, compared with almost 9-per-cent annually since 2015. 

The Liberals are also promising to launch a “comprehensive” review of government spending, which the platform says will focus on amalgamating service-delivery so there is one point of access for people to interact with government programs, “consolidating” grants from different government sources that serve similar purposes, and “significantly” reduce how much Ottawa spends on private consultants, and other changes like the use of artificial intelligence to make the government more efficient. 

The platform says these changes will lead to “savings” of $28 billion by 2028-29. 

Carney said that he would achieve savings in government spending through attrition, cutting outside consultants and consolidating many overlapping programs, for example several different incentives offered to small and medium sized businesses.

Carney also repeated his promise that his government would not cut health and social transfers to provinces, and would preserve programs like national child care, dental care, pharmacare and an emerging school food program. 

The platform was light on detail about a Carney government’s approach to climate change, after he reduced the consumer carbon price to zero and promised to improve the existing requirement for provinces to have an industrial carbon pricing system. It doesn’t spell out how a Liberal government would meet its climate targets without the consumer price, and alludes to possible measures to allow heavy emitters to help pay for people to adopt green tech and home retrofits. 

Carney also took aim at Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, ridiculing him for a recent promise to ditch the Liberal government’s ban on single-use plastics like straws, and alleging a Tory government would cut services. Liberal staffers in Ottawa distributed estimated costs of the Conservative election promises, claiming a Poilievre government would have to cut more than $33 billion a year to keep his promise to slash $1 from government budgets for every new dollar of spending.