Happy Labour Day, Canada — Carney's Majority Means 4 More Years of Making You Poorer

May 1 is International Workers' Day — a date that celebrates the dignity of labour and the hard-won progress of working people. This year, it arrives with Mark Carney holding a majority government, a mandate to spend $575 billion by 2029-30, and a record that shows what Liberal governance actually delivers for ordinary Canadians: more debt, higher housing costs, and 9.8 million people who can't afford food.

The Mandate Canadians Actually Voted For

When the Liberals won their majority, they ran on a costed platform. The numbers buried in the back pages were stark: $130 billion in new measures over four years, adding $225 billion to the federal debt. Deficits would climb as high as $62.3 billion in a single year — larger than the entire annual budget of most G20 nations. The plan projected a return to balance "eventually," dependent on unspecified savings and optimistic economic multipliers that have never once materialized in 10 years of Liberal governance.

That was the plan going in. Before the first Liberal budget. Before the spring economic update. Before the overruns began.

Within weeks of the spring economic update, program spending had already climbed to $536.2 billion this fiscal year — $7.6 billion higher than the fall budget projected. The four-year cumulative overrun is already $25 billion above projection. By 2029-30, the Liberals now project spending will hit $575.4 billion. And if history is any guide — every Liberal fiscal update has revised spending upward from the previous one — the actual bill will be higher still.

What Working Canadians Got for 10 Years of Liberal Promises

The Liberals have been in power since 2015. Let's look at the scorecard for working Canadians:

A PM Who Has Never Worked for a Living

Mark Carney spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs, then moved from central bank to central bank, then to managing a $1-trillion investment fund. He has never run a small business. He has never worried about a mortgage payment. He has never stood in line at a food bank. He has never faced a hiring freeze, a layoff notice, or a grocery bill that made him choose between protein and produce.

This is the man now in charge of Canada's economic policy for the next four years — with a majority government that faces no Parliamentary check on its spending decisions. He can pass any budget he wants. He can borrow any amount. He can implement any tax. And none of it requires opposition support.

Carney's governing philosophy, as evidenced by every policy announcement since he took office, is that the solution to Canada's problems is more government: more spending, more institutions, more Crown corporations, more "strategic" funds, more regulation. The Canada Strong Fund — $25 billion borrowed to invest in projects the private sector won't touch — is the perfect symbol. When private capital says no, that's a signal. The Liberals call it an opportunity for Ottawa.

What a Liberal Majority Actually Looks Like for Workers

For the next four years, Canadian workers can expect:

• Housing affordability to remain out of reach, as supply-side reforms remain politically difficult for a party dependent on urban homeowners and land-use gatekeepers
• Carbon pricing on industry to continue — the industrial carbon tax was never eliminated — adding to the cost of everything manufactured, transported, and heated in Canada
• Regulatory barriers blocking resource projects that would employ tens of thousands of trades workers in well-paying, union-protected jobs
• Debt service costs crowding out program spending — by 2031, interest alone consumes the equivalent of every dollar of personal income tax paid by everyone in Atlantic Canada
• A mainstream media landscape — $600 million subsidized by the Liberals — that will frame all of this as responsible governance

On International Workers' Day 2026, the working people of Canada deserve a government that measures success not in press conference optics and WEF keynote speeches, but in whether they can afford a home, feed their families, and retire with dignity.

By every one of those measures, the Liberals have failed. And now they have four more years with no one to stop them.

Sources: CBC News, "Liberal platform promises $130B in new measures, adding $225B to federal debt" (April 2025); National Post, Matthew Lau, "Carney accelerates Canada's fiscal collapse" (April 30, 2026); Liberal Spring Economic Update 2026; Statistics Canada food insecurity data; Canadian Real Estate Association housing price data.