""Generational" is the Carney government's adjective of choice at this moment of consequence. The word appeared 11 times in the prepared text of Francois Philippe-Champagne's budget speech and another 45 times in the 493-page budget document. It is a word apparently meant to speak to both the gravity of the country's situation and the bigness of this government response. "This is not a time for small plans," Champagne writes in the budget's foreword."
"But it's also still relatively modest when compared with previous moments of national crisis. As a share of GDP the deficit in relation to the size of the national economy it's projected to peak at 2.5 per cent. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the deficit was 14.8 per cent of GDP. During the Great Recession, Stephen Harper's Conservative government ran a deficit equal to 3.6 per cent of GDP."
"Generational" is used extensively to convey the gravity and scale of the federal response. The budget lists $78.3 billion deficit for the current fiscal year, declining to $56.6 billion in four years. The 2025-26 deficit projection is $36 billion higher than the December projection and $16 billion higher than the earlier Liberal estimate. Projections once suggested the deficit could reach $90 billion. As a share of GDP the deficit is projected to peak at 2.5 per cent, compared with 14.8 per cent during COVID-19, 3.6 per cent during the Great Recession and 22.5 per cent in the Second World War.
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