Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will table her fourth federal budget today, laying out the government’s plan to spend billions of dollars on housing to improve supply — a plan the Liberals also hope will boost their prospects with a crucial group of voters.
Unlike past budgets, which mostly saved their announcements for budget day itself, this one has been publicized piecemeal. Freeland, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Housing Minister Sean Fraser and other cabinet ministers have been touring the country for weeks, releasing details of key budget measures.
It’s part of a plan to pitch voters on new programs that otherwise might have been buried in today’s news coverage of a budget document that’s expected to be physically bigger than in years’ past.
Freeland will table the budget around 4 p.m. ET. CBCNews.ca will carry her remarks in the House of Commons live.
Ottawa has announced roughly $38 billion in new financial commitments — including $17 billion in loan-based programs — before the budget’s release.
How the federal government intends to pay for all that new spending isn’t clear yet. Sources have told Radio-Canada that the budget will impose a tax increase on the richest taxpayers — one that senior Liberal sources say will affect less than 1 per cent of Canadians.
Some of the planned new spending is earmarked for future fiscal years — a manoeuvre that will give Ottawa some fiscal breathing room.
The economy is also marginally stronger than Ottawa initially projected, which could mean higher revenue to offset some of the planned new spending.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland (left), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Housing Minister Sean Fraser (right) have been on a weeks-long tour releasing details of the budget in advance. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)
Polls continue to suggest the government is polling underwater with house-hunting voters — particularly those in the millennial and Generation Z cohorts.
What do you want to see included in today’s federal budget announcement? Let us know in an email to ask@cbc.ca.
The government’s 28-page housing plan, unveiled last week, promises to maintain the already well-subscribed tax-free savings account, extend mortgage amortization terms and increase the RRSP withdrawal limit for some first-home buyers, among other measures.
It’s a dizzying array of new commitments meant to blunt the attacks of critics like Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has made housing the centrepiece of his policy playbook.
Speaking to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce on Monday, Trudeau said millennials and members of Generation Z, the people who now make up a majority of the country’s workforce, need a hand up as they grapple with “a cost of living crisis.”
“This is a resilient group but … they now feel like middle class stability is out of reach,” he said. “We need to meet this moment. Our country cannot succeed unless young people succeed.”
Freeland unveils new measures for first-time homebuyers
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced new measures on Thursday aimed at lessening the financial strain on first-time homebuyers, including 30-year amortization rates on insured mortgages for newly built homes.
“We recognize that there is an urgent need today to invest in Canada and Canadians, and we recognize in particular that we’re at really a pivotal moment for young Canadians, for millennials, for Gen Z,” Freeland said last week.
It’s a longstanding Canadian tradition for the finance minister to purchase a new pair of shoes before budget day.
On Monday, Freeland chose a pair of black pumps from Maguire, a Montreal-based firm owned by millennial women — a nod to the people the government is hoping to reach with its latest spending plan.
Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland tries on a pair of shoes from direct-to-consumer footwear company Maguire during a pre-budget photo op in her office in Ottawa, on Monday, April 15, 2024. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)
While the budget is expected to boost spending, Freeland has said it won’t increase the $40 billion deficit forecast last year. Today, the public will learn what the government’s projected deficit and debt levels are and how it plans to keep the country on a sustainable fiscal track.
The Trudeau government has run a deficit every year since it was elected.
It posted even bigger deficits during the COVID-19 pandemic as it scrambled to shore up an economy on the ropes during an unprecedented global health crisis.
On the Liberal government’s watch, the national debt has more than doubled to $1.2 trillion.
Now, with interest rates at a 20-year high, the cost to carry that debt has spiked from $20.3 billion in 2020-21 to $46.5 billion, according to Freeland’s fall economic statement.
That’s nearly double the amount Ottawa spends on the military. And debt service charges can be expected to march even higher in the years ahead.
Tax increase expected in federal budget
Political watchers say Ottawa has no choice but to raise taxes in the upcoming federal budget to offset billions of dollars of new spending, but who will be getting the increase remains to be seen.
As economic growth stagnates and high inflation adds to the government’s spending pressures, Ottawa faces some tough choices.
Freeland’s preferred fiscal “guardrail” has changed over the years.
In the fall economic statement, Freeland said Ottawa would keep the deficit at about one per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) — essentially one per cent of the size of the national economy — and lower the debt-to-GDP ratio.
Tuesday’s document will reveal if Ottawa has kept that promise. The government’s decision to cut or “reprofile” some spending — with estimated savings of about $2.25 billion a year — has helped, but there may be more to do.
Canada flirting with a rating downgrade, RBC warns
In a recent report, RBC Royal Bank warned that Canada faces a possible ratings agency downgrade — which would be a bad development for the government and everyone else who borrows money in this country.
Canada is one of the select few countries with a AAA credit rating on its sovereign debt.
RBC said “Canada is at a greater risk of a downgrade than other top-rated peers” as Ottawa piles on more spending to tackle the housing crisis.
“Even though deeper deficits and higher associated sovereign borrowing costs may feel like a distant problem for many Canadians, the impact has the potential to trickle down to most households and businesses,” economist Rachel Battaglia said in the RBC report.
Experts are expecting the government to increase taxes.
Freeland last week ruled out a middle-class tax hike — but this government’s definition of “middle class” has never been clear.
“I’m pretty confident they will raise revenues because they’ve squeezed themselves on their fiscal situation and they continue to commit to spending that is not sustainable,” said Robert Asselin, senior vice president of policy at the Business Council of Canada and an adviser to Bill Morneau when he was finance minister.
Budget expected to target wealthy Canadians
Many experts have been predicting tax measures targeting wealthy Canadians or large corporations, or both.
“The problem for [the government] is either a surtax on big corporations or a wealth tax sounds very good, but in practice they’re terrible. They don’t work,” said Asselin.
“Let’s be honest. They have to raise taxes. I don’t think that’s a big secret. But can they do it in a thoughtful, provocative way?” said James Thorne, chief capital market strategist for Wellington Altus Private Wealth.
“If you do it on the high-income people, they’re just going to move their money offshore.”
Speaking to reporters on Parliament Hill Monday, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he expects the government — his party’s partner in the confidence-and-supply agreement — to “take on corporate greed.”
New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh says he wants to see the budget’s tax measures aimed squarely at ‘the wealthy’ and ‘big corporations.’ (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
“The wealthy should pay,” he said, adding that big business should also shoulder the burden.
“We do not want to see any pressure put on working people. We don’t want tax increases on working class people. We want to see big corporations start paying their fair share.”
At a conference in Ottawa last week, Poilievre — who has mocked Trudeau and his government as “not worth the cost” — said his party will fight tooth and nail against any tax increases.
“We believe that a dollar in the hands of a person who earned it is always more powerful than in the hands of a politician who taxed it,” he said.
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:*510w)
