Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walk together before delivering the fall economic statement in Ottawa on Nov. 21, 2023.The target audience is young people and like a pair of Instagram influencers, Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland have treated them to a series of unboxing videos to show off shiny new products.
And then there are spending plans that look like hockey sticks on graphs, with smaller amounts now and bigger sums years down the road. The $8-billion in net new defence spending over the next five years will only include $612-million this year. The political point is for the Liberals to tell younger voters they are doing a lot of big things for them, and tell the country they aren’t breaking the bank.government leaned more to the spending than the restraint, with pandemic and postpandemic spending tipping the scales of their fiscal policy.
On Monday, the Prime Minister was framing the problem in a speech to the Chamber of Commerce as a matter of fairness for millennials whose economic lives were riled by the financial crisis 15 years ago and Gen Z, whose start was hobbled by the pandemic and who now face high rents, house prices and mortgages.