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William Watson — The Carney rule: If you find a dollar, spend it

Without booking some update spending into last fiscal year the government would have missed the deficit target it set just five months ago

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Credit where credit is due: This spring’s fiscal update is just 167 pages long. That compares to the ill-fated fall statement of 2024, the one Chrystia Freeland wrote but didn’t deliver, which was 270 pages. Document bloat isn’t the worst form of Ottawa bloat but maybe if they start by editing their statements more tightly, they’ll get into the habit of clipping. On the other hand, it looks like there are more words per page in this latest update. I suppose that’s a kind of productivity increase.

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