Jordan O'Neil

You know it’s bad when even Althia Raj has to admit the federal government has left Canada with no real fiscal room for any unexpected shock—spending and tax cuts at crisis levels while debt service steadily crowds out health care, long-term care, and productivity investments On the CBC’s At Issue panel, the people paid to hold power to account, Coyne flags the pre-election spending binge and government intrusion into work the private sector can finance, Raj agrees the budget isn’t prudent, and then the whole thing collapses into banter and a joke about fiscal-conservative credentials It isn’t funny. These are the journalists who spent years normalizing abandoned anchors and ever-larger deficits; when the cupboard is finally bare even they can see it, the reaction is still studio chuckling instead of sustained pressure. That is the real failure of accountability @acoyne @althiaraj @RosieBarton

Lisa Raitt questioned the budget’s assumption of 20% year-on-year revenue growth from Crown corporations. “I have no idea how they’re going to get that out of crown corporations, to be honest,” she said. “I had them in my portfolio. They… are not known to be able to increase the revenues 20% year on year over the next five years.” She stressed that the fiscal plan depends on revenues materializing to offset rising debt. “Unless the rabbit coming out of the hat is increased revenues somewhere along the way… what are the revenues going to be?” Raitt asked, noting bond rating agencies will ask whether “Canada [can] actually create the revenues to offset all this debt” and warning that without projects generating returns in the next two years: “it ain’t going to be pretty” She also pointed to practical hurdles, including long investment horizons of “half decade to decade” versus short political cycles, and the risk that major machinery-of-government changes will push institutions into “navel gazing” testing whether the public sector can still deliver results quickly @lraitt