Mark Carney’s first budget, to be tabled Nov 4, will not be a happy document. In fact says economist Dr. Tim Sargent, Director of Domestic Policy at Ottawa's prestigious Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Canadians should brace for the worst. Speaking on tonight's Hannaford show, he foresees inflation as policy, shrinking purchasing power, and little in the way of protection for ordinary people..Channelling Thomas Sowell, Sargent tells me, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs ... The government has hard choices and painful options.”Well, it's actually ordinary people coping with rising prices who are going to feel the pain. But with Canada’s debt having already blown past $2 trillion, with deficits in the hundreds of billions, are there even options at all for the people we elected to lead us?.None that are good for 'ordinary people.' On paper, the government could raise taxes, cut spending, or inflate away its obligations.Sargent is confident which option Carney will take. “The most likely strategy is inflation. That’s what governments usually do, at least for as long as they can get away with it.”Translation: Ottawa will pay off its debts in cheaper dollars while Canadians struggle at the checkout counter..The other choices are politically impossible.Taxes are already high. Raise them further, and people will stop investing or find ways around them.Spending cuts? Forget it. “This government massively increased spending over the last ten years, with the public service growing by about 40 per cent,” Sargent noted. “It’s hard to see them drastically reducing the size of the civil service now.”So inflation it is — until the markets lose patience and Canada hits the wall. “That’s usually how this ends,” Sargent said.Meanwhile, Ottawa is trumpeting the new Major Projects Office as evidence it is serious about growth. And indeed, shortly before Parliament's September 15 return, Carney did fast-track five projects.But Sargent remains unimpressed.“This isn’t just low-hanging fruit. This is fruit that’s fallen to the ground,” he said.The projects — Darlington, Kitimat, McIlvenna — were already well advanced. Mr. Carney's supposed “fast-tracking” adds nothing except headlines, and maybe a future bill when proponents come looking for subsidies.Worse, the truly important projects — the kind that could change investor sentiment toward Canada — are still stuck in the mud. Expanding DeltaPort, for example, has been five years in environmental review, with approval not expected before 2028. That’s eight years to decide whether to expand a port crucial to Canada’s trade.If the Major Projects Office were meant to cut through red tape, it isn’t doing it. “You’re just introducing a new character into this play, as opposed to a wholesale reform of the system,” Sargent said..The result: Canada continues to look like a place where projects never get done. Investors notice. So do Canadians watching jobs, tax revenues, and opportunity drift elsewhere.At bottom, the story is one of political cowardice. Carney inherited an over-complicated environmental approval regime from Trudeau and has so far shown little appetite to reform it. He still clings to a green agenda that even Europe — not to mention the U.S. — is abandoning. And when faced with tough choices, the instinct is always the same: throw money at the problem, add another layer of bureaucracy, and hope no one notices the cost.Sargent’s warning could not be plainer. The budget will not fix this. It will not even try. It will shift the burden onto Canadians by eroding their savings, inflating their grocery bills, and asking them to carry the consequences of Ottawa’s refusal to choose.Inflation as policy, paralysis as strategy... That's what's waiting for Canadians on November 4th.The Hannaford show airs tonight at 7 p.m. on the Western Standard website.
