Liberals’ maiden ‘sunny ways’ budget showers spending, deficits to spur growth
OTTAWA — The new Liberal government delivered a sunny ways budget Tuesday brimming with optimism and billion-dollar spending increases spread across a wide spectrum of society.
But the bold effort to spur economic growth after almost a decade of fiscal restraint will add more than $100 billion to the federal debt over the next five years as Finance Minister Bill Morneau plunges Ottawa back into the red.
And like March sunshine in the frozen national capital, there’s concern that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bright budget may not heat up the economy quite as much as the Liberals promised it would.
“We act for the years and decades to come,” Morneau said in his maiden budget speech in the House of Commons.