Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 5, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba A2 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I FEDERAL BUDGET 25 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2025 VOL 154 NO 298 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 2025 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published six days a week in print and always online at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204-697-7000 CEO / MIKE POWER Editor / PAUL SAMYN Associate Editor Enterprise / SCOTT GIBBONS Associate Editor News / STACEY THIDRICKSON Associate Editor Digital News / WENDY SAWATZKY Director Photo and Multimedia / MIKE APORIUS NEWSMEDIA COUNCIL The Winnipeg Free Press is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent organization established to determine acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please send them to: editorialconcerns@freepress.mb.ca. 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INSIDE Arts and Life C1 Business B5 Classifieds D7 Comics C5 Diversions C6-7 Horoscope C4 Jumble C6 Miss Lonelyhearts C4 Opinion A6-7 Sports D1 Television C4 Weather B8 COLUMNISTS: Tom Brodbeck A4 READER SERVICE ● GENERAL INQUIRIES 204-697-7000 CIRCULATION INQUIRIES MISSING OR INCOMPLETE PAPER? Call or email before 10 a.m. weekdays or 11 a.m. Saturday City: 204-697-7001 Outside Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 press 1 6:30 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday-Friday.; 7 a.m. - noon Saturday; Closed Sunday TO SUBSCRIBE: 204-697-7001 Out of Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 The Free Press receives support from the Local Journalism Initiative funded by the Government of Canada What remains to be seen, Fong said, is whether those businesses will bring their money to Canada, and whether do- mestic firms can take advantage of new national infrastructure to reach global markets like Europe and Asia. Fong said Carney is “swinging for the fences” with this budget, but the plan it- self lacks details on tax and regulatory reform. “The real question is, if we build it, will they come? And there wasn’t a lot of detail in this budget in terms of how are we actually going to incentivize the firms to make those investments to take action and diversify trade,” he said. Most major spending items in this budget — billions for defence and a one-percentage-point income tax cut delivered in July — were already tele- graphed ahead of time, leaving few surprises in the document itself, Fong noted. Budget 2025 adds $89.7 billion in net new spending over five years. That figure incorporates a projected $51.2 billion in savings over the same hori- zon from departments’ budget cuts and various government efficiency meas- ures. The budget projects a deficit of $78.3 billion for this fiscal year — more than double estimates for last year and roughly in line with a broad range of analysts’ estimates heading into Tues- day. The debt-to-GDP ratio, previously a fiscal anchor for the federal govern- ment, is expected to rise modestly and then stabilize over the coming years. The Liberals’ forecast meets the party’s new stated goals of a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio and a balanced operating budget in three years. Some fiscal critics, including interim Parliamentary Budget Officer Jason Jacques, raised alarm bells before the budget was tabled about Canada’s fiscal sustainability and the expected pace of spending and borrowing. Champagne defended the decision not to balance the budget in his speech Tuesday. He argued slashing the deficit would result in cuts to vital social programs and a failure to make the capital invest- ments needed to pivot Canada’s econ- omy. The minority Liberal government will need to secure support from out- side its caucus in order to pass the budget, which automatically becomes a confidence vote in the House of Com- mons. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said following Champagne’s speech in the House that his party wanted to see an “affordable budget” that capped the deficit at $42 billion. He said Conserv- atives will not support Budget 2025, which he said would drive up costs for Canadians. Poilievre said he would put forward an amendment to cut the bureaucracy and kill measures maintained in the budget, such as the industrial carbon price. The budget document says the gov- ernment will slash the federal public service by 40,000 positions, or about 10 per cent, over the next three years. NDP Leader Don Davies said his party will take time to study the budget before offering a verdict. He said he expects his caucus will arrive at a consensus but did not rule out any member potentially abstaining from the vote. Green Leader Elizabeth May said she’d need to see changes before of- fering her vote to the Liberals. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blan- chet said the budget offered nothing for Quebec and he would not support it. Randall Bartlett, deputy chief econo- mist at Desjardins, said Budget 2025 is “a step in the right direction” but he doesn’t feel the spending plan meets the ambitions cited by Carney and Champagne ahead of its release. “I think they need to stretch a bit fur- ther in terms of providing greater tax advantage to investment,” he said. Efforts to save money across the pub- lic service are also lacking, Bartlett said, because they rely on re-indexing pension benefits rather than the hard work of actually making government smaller. The Liberals also presented upside and downside scenarios in this budget that depend on whether economic growth comes in stronger than the rela- tively weak baseline underpinning its fiscal outlook. A stronger-than-expected economy would help to shrink the deficit by an extra $5 billion each year, according to budget projections — which would help get debt-to-GDP on a declining path in a shorter period of time. In the downside scenario, economic weakness would deepen the deficit by $9.2 billion annu- ally. Bartlett said he sees “substantial risk to long-term fiscal sustainability” if the economic forecast comes in on the low- er side of the government’s projections. Rachel Samson, vice-president of research at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, said the Liberals are “cutting it fairly close” on their fiscal anchor of a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio. While she said she isn’t overly con- cerned with the government’s fiscal sustainability, she agrees with Bartlett that a worsening economic outcome could mean the government misses key fiscal anchors. — The Canadian Press BUDGET ● FROM A1 “This does not really address the market housing piece of the housing continuum (in Manitoba),” he said, adding the needs of both renters and potential homeowners have to be met. The budget doesn’t address the need for a “robust investment” in non-mar- ket housing for low-income households, said Shauna Therese MacKinnon, a member of the Right to Housing Coalition. Manitoba needs 11,189 new hous- ing starts annually through 2035 to improve affordability, according to a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. report released earlier this year. Immigration cuts outlined in Tuesday’s budget could affect Mani- toba home building in the long-term, McInnes said. Temporary resident ad- missions will be slashed from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 in 2026. Meantime, civil service staff reduc- tions will impact all front-line ser- vices for Manitobans, said Marianne Hladun, the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s regional executive vice-presi- dent for the Prairies. The budget proposes cuts amounting to about 16,000 jobs by next year and 40,000 by 2028-29 to create a “sustain- able” workforce. “This will mean longer lines, delays in accessing services, all those people who have been waiting for years for immigration papers, all of those things will be impacted,” Hladun said. The union represents between 9,000 and 10,000 front-line workers at Veterans Affairs and Service Canada, among other federal departments. Hladun worries the government’s early retirement incentive to reduce employment numbers through volun- tary departure will remove institu- tional knowledge from offices. Term employees, too, should be worried about the future, the union boss said. Environment and Climate Change Canada is among the government branches asked to find savings. It has a 15 per cent savings target over three years. Winnipeg-based Canada Water Agency is being scaled back — just two years after being established. ECCC shrinks as support for Canadian oil and gas production remains strong, said James Wilt, Climate Action Team Manitoba’s policy development man- ager. “We see that as totally inconsistent with the need to rapidly wind down fossil fuel production and consump- tion,” he said. “Huge concern for us when it comes to the prospect of shipping liquefied natural gas or any sort of fossil fuels through Manitoba.” Kinew has floated the idea of ship- ping LNG through the Port of Chur- chill. Wilt applauded a $40-million com- mitment to the Youth Climate Corps, a paid training program beginning next year. Ottawa’s release marks a clear shift to an economic-based budget, said Bram Strain, president of the Business Council of Manitoba. He applauded the productivity su- per-deduction, a tax incentive aimed at returning investment costs to compa- nies faster. Manitoba manufacturers will benefit, Strain said. “(It) really changes the tax land- scape here,” he said. “It will unleash capital. If anyone was holding off mak- ing investments on their production lines or increasing productivity, this will allow them to do more.” The budget’s military spending — $81 billion over five years — will be a boon to Winnipeg and Shilo, Strain predicted. The Port of Churchill will also boost Manitoba’s economy if it’s fast-tracked through Ottawa’s major projects office, noted Chris Lorenc, the Manitoba Heavy Construction Association’s president. “We can do nothing and face certain calamity, or we can bite the bullet and invest in our economy’s diversifica- tion,” Lorenc said, adding he’d like to know which projects are eligible for the $51 billion in infrastructure funds. Chris Avery, president of Arctic Gateway Group, said Port of Churchill budget mentions were a “significant commitment,” but there was no solid indication “per se” of an announce- ment date, if one materializes. He’ll be looking into various funds cited in the budget, such as the Arctic Infrastructure Fund, he said. The budget proposes to let Canada Post set its own postage rates, which Canadian Union of Postal Workers Winnipeg Local 856 president Sean Tugby supports. “Anything to help us be more reve- nue-neutral, (is) generally, a good thing for us,” Tugby said. In January, Canada Post raised its stamp price by 25 per cent, which could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings for the floundering service, he said. The Crown corporation reported an $841 million loss before tax for the 2024 fiscal year. — With files from Carol Sanders and Joyanne Pursaga gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com nicole.buffie@winnipegfreepress.com REACTION ● FROM A1 MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham: ‘This is an opportunity to get the federal funding.’ Cuts scheduled for next three years Budget pledges to shrink public service by 40,000 O TTAWA — The federal govern- ment intends to slash the public service by 10 per cent over the next three years — eliminating up to 40,000 jobs — as it strays from its election promise to cut the number of federal employees solely through attrition. The cuts come as the government moves to slow the rate of growth in government spending on operating costs from eight per cent to less than one per cent, and make government programs more efficient through measures like the expanded use of artificial intelligence. The budget document, tabled on Tuesday, says the goal is to aim for about 330,000 public sector workers by the end of 2028-29, down from a peak of almost 368,000 in 2023-24. The plan will also see a reduction of 1,000 executive positions over the next two years. The Government of Canada website says there were 9,340 public service executives as of March. The government says it also will reduce spending on management and other consulting services by 20 per cent in three years’ time. In the written text of his budget speech, Finance Minister François- Philippe Champagne said a more effi- cient government requires a stream- lined public service. “Since 2019, the federal public ser- vice population has grown at a rate far greater than the Canadian population,” he said. “We must get the size of our public service back to a sustainable level that is in keeping with best practices.” While some reductions will come from attrition through retirements, voluntary departures and previous savings exercises, the budget acknowl- edges some positions will be cut. Prime Minister Mark Carney committed during the April election campaign to “capping, not cutting” the public service. The government is trying to boost the rate of attrition through early retirements by offering a one-time voluntary program to allow workers to retire up to five years early without incurring a pension penalty. The budget proposes an early retire- ment option for people aged 50 or 55 and older, depending on their start date. The option would be available to those with at least 10 years of employment and two years of pensionable service. The budget says the one-year pro- gram will begin by Jan. 15, 2026, or when the legislation receives royal as- sent. It proposes to provide Public Ser- vices and Procurement Canada with $15 million over two years, starting in 2025-26, to administer the program. The budget says government or- ganizations will be communicating these measures to their employees and collective bargaining agents “in the coming weeks.” The Public Service Alliance, the largest union representing federal public servants, has warned about job cuts. The union has also said the government should cut the number of executives and spending on bonuses. “There’s no doubt the executive ranks have grown much faster than the rest of the public service,” PSAC na- tional president Sharon DeSousa said in an email Monday. “Over the past year alone, the federal public service has lost 10,000 jobs, while the execu- tive ranks have grown by 185 positions. “This government’s focus should be on investing in the front-line public services people in Canada depend on — not expanding the size of senior management.” The budget says several departments have identified ways to use technology, like AI, to find savings by “streamlin- ing workflows, reducing manual effort and optimizing service delivery.” Following through on a Liberal elec- tion platform promise, the budget says the government plans to launch an Of- fice of Digital Transformation to identi- fy and implement technology solutions across the federal government. It also says Shared Services Canada, in partnership with the Department of National Defence and the Commu- nications Security Establishment, will develop an internal, Canadian-made AI tool that can be deployed across the federal government. Former clerk of the Privy Council Mi- chael Wernick said the budget creates a big “to-do list” for the public service. “I would say it’s a significant shift after seven or eight years of growth and expanding head counts and bud- gets to a period of downsizing and tight budgets,” he said. “But what’s really striking is most of the details are still to follow.” Wernick said public servants across the country were living in “maximum uncertainty” over the last few months and got “some” clarity from the budget. “They’re still living with uncertainty about their particular department, agency or workplace, so that level of uncertainty is still there,” he said. — The Canadian Press CATHERINE MORRISON ;