The cover of the 2025 Budget provides a striking visual representation of how much priorities have shifted under the Carney government from the previous Trudeau administration.
The 2022 Budget features a young family.
The 2023 Budget, confident and satisfied young professionals (or at least models posing as them).
The 2024 Budget, a collage of happy Canadians, young and old.
Contrast these with the 2025 Budget: An icebreaker pushing through icy waters.
The message is clear. Goodbye sunny ways and feel-good social programs. Hello defence, infrastructure and the economy.
The question is, is this the focus Canadians want?
Yes and no, according to new (and old) polling data. It’s largely what older Canadians want, but not necessarily younger ones.
Polling data from Abacus Data reveal a generational divide in priorities, David Coletto, Abacus’ chief executive, wrote in a Nov. 19 tweet:
“Those under 30 put far more weight on job security, housing, inequality and immigration, while climate change sits close behind.
“Older Canadians focus more on the economy, healthcare and the risks they associate with Donald Trump’s administration.”
“This gap between generations is wide and reflects two different lived experiences,” he added.
The differences in lived experiences are real. Young people today face a harsh job market — and the threat of AI wiping out their jobs.
They face an unaffordable housing market; many no longer even dream of owning a home.
They are putting off children and marriage, in part due to concerns over affordability and child care.
Older Canadians, by contrast, are more likely to have secure housing. Many worked stable jobs that today provide them with secure retirement income.
They are, or will soon be, recipients of the government’s largest social program: Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
The Carney government’s first budget offered few new goodies for older Canadians, but arguably didn’t need to. More concerningly, it offered little that will assuage the concerns of the young.
To the contrary, the projected $78.3-billion deficit risks being inflationary, according to classic economic theory. This could exacerbate the affordability challenge.
Its action on housing has been decidedly less than promised. Housing policy expert Mike Moffatt has said he was surprised by how far the budget’s housing commitments fell short of the Liberals’ campaign rhetoric.
On youth unemployment, the budget offers little. And the government’s lack of action on AI so far suggests it has not even begun to wrap its arms around the opportunities and threats this technology poses.
In a recent interview with Canadian Affairs, 23-year-old Liberal MP Amandeep Sodhi aptly summed up how the Carney Liberals — her own party — is failing to speak to the concerns of youth.
“The older Liberals are more [focused on] trade, [the] economy, GDP, GDP, GDP — [having the] fastest growing economy in the G7, tax cuts,” she said.
“I think that’s what they cater to. And then obviously younger people, we care about things that hit kind of like closer to home — so mental health issues that are not talked about enough … obviously the LGBTQ community, investing in marginalized communities,” she said.
The Trudeau government was, by contrast, quite focused on these and other domestic issues. Many of its signature policy accomplishments fell squarely within the jurisdiction of the provinces: child care, dental care, pharmacare, a national school food program.
We are glad to see the Carney government pivoting to macro issues. The constitution gives Ottawa exclusive responsibility for matters such as national security, trade and commerce for a reason. It is the only level of government well placed to address them.
If Ottawa prioritizes matters within its jurisdiction, it may hope to do a good job of them — bringing much needed attention to areas the Trudeau government woefully neglected (defence), mismanaged (immigration) or undermined (infrastructure that supports trade diversification).
Last week, veteran senior civil servant Tim Sargent made this point in a panel discussion on the public sector’s size and productivity problem.
“Until we really get different levels of government on their right swim lines focused on their problems and accountable for their outcomes, I don’t think we’re going to make a lot of progress on a lot of the big issues facing our country,” he said.
We agree. But Carney’s challenge will be finding ways to focus on the macro, while still making voters feel like it is attuned to the micro.
This will be no easy task.
Even the Conservatives, which have seized on affordability and youth concerns in their messaging, failed to offer a budget critique that would suggest they would have done much differently.
Perhaps this is because the changes Ottawa could make to reduce the deficit and strengthen the economy are too unpopular, such as cutting OAS, or too hard, such as reforming the tax code.
But the provinces also need to step up. Voters are anxious about housing unaffordability and health care because the provinces have failed to address housing development barriers or health-care reform.
The yawning gap in priorities of voters young and old is a concern that cannot be left unaddressed.
The Carney government has promised transformation; so far, we have seen no leader — federal or provincial — that is proposing transformation on the scale that’s needed.
We’re hopeful someone will step up. Alas, Canada’s young people appear less so.
The challenges facing young people today might be alleviated by first of all making sure we have competent provincial Premiers. As it is now, anyone can become a Premier if they know how to manage populism, and manipulate voters’ impressions of them. Personal political agendas can run along under the surface, without people being aware. Party ideology often takes over important decisions that affect people’s lives.
And the federal government never interferes, or too rarely.
More public education on Canada’s system, and better analyses of what these Premiers’ records are like, without PR interfering.
Zero oversight is how Trump moved into the OO.
“The yawning gap in priorities of voters young and old is a concern that cannot be left unaddressed.”
Easy to say, not so easy to accomplish.
I’m on the Boomer side of the equation and have distinctly different concerns as opposed to my grandkid’s concerns. I can’t see any way to please both side of the equation…