Tuesday November 4, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC [Published at 10:00 am PT]
Socioeconomic editorial analysis | by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
See: BUDGET 2025 NEWS COVERAGE NOVEMBER 4 | NEWS SECTION: BUDGET 2025
While it’s been talked about, debated and poked at for months, the vision for what Canada needs in the way of a path forward is really not yet clear.
A lot of hopes are being placed on the Liberal federal government’s Budget 2025, set for release today Tuesday November 4.
As Prime Minister Mark Carney has outlined many times, the dynamics of the Canadian economy have been damaged if not changed forever. Sure, the economic takeover ambitions of the US President started this ball rolling in 2025 but the underpinnings of what got the Canadian economy to this crisis point have been long in the making.
Success with capitalism has been rewarded in all western economies but over the last 40 years this has slowly and almost methodically created an enormous gulf between have’s and have-nots. Now the normal things of life like housing, food and health care are often now unaffordable or unavailable.
Talk about needs versus wants! Canadian households and small businesses need improvements in nearly everything now — at the very basic of levels. Municipalities struggle to maintain a standard of living for their taxpayers and communities.
For Carney to have recently asked young working adults to sacrifice even more is perhaps the reality.
But some visionary leadership is the only thing that will lead the nearly dead horse of a young generation and a broken economy out to a new world of productivity and opportunity.
It’s almost too much to expect from one federal budget, but here’s what Canada needs:
- A whole new level of housing that is basic but affordable — outside the commoditized real estate market.
- A circulating system of jobs without stigma … where people can still keep a roof over their heads by being paid for small jobs that help with societal rebuilding while retraining for new jobs or pivoting a small business. This needs to be a setup well beyond standard EI — more than half of Canada’s working population is *not* eligible for EI under the current system.
- Capacity for communities to grow their own food, as a buffer for when the grocery store costs too much or the food bank food quality is insufficient.
- A one-time debt relief payment to all households with non-mortgage consumer debt (similar to the pandemic CERB payment but used only for application to credit card debt). The indebtedness of most Canadian households has a stranglehold on the capacity for health, employment or family cohesion.
- A serious revision of the immigration system so that incoming new residents are carefully matched to workforce demands, and at the same time a revision of economic reliance on temporary foreign workers (provide some dignity to the work these people do — for current TFWs and also Canadians who might appreciate basic work).
- Investments in big projects that will make fundamental changes to how Canada produces revenue (can this country really get past being ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’?). Even still, the energy, mineral resources and forestry are the mainstay of the economy. With one of the best-educated populations in the free world, it’s time for Canadians to become a masterful creative force of intellectual property — supplying the world with ideas and getting paid for it. Curtail the brain drain within this country, let alone to other countries.
- Further protections for seniors and people with disabilities. Rather than seen as a financial burden to society, these demographic sectors need to be tapped for their wisdom, expertise and availability.
- Municipalities need federal funding to make creative changes in communities toward sustainability and livability — like a broader range of housing types and vibrant local economies.
- A health care system making a strident shift toward wellness and disease prevention, if for no other reason than the disease-based model being the most costly way to support health.
A big ask:
All of this is a big ask for one federal budget from a minority government that could — with a minority in the House — be more feeble on the parliamentary side of things than it would have hoped.
Fingers crossed that today’s budget cracks open the doors to many new areas of possibility for Canada and Canadians.
===== ABOUT THE WRITER:
Island Social Trends Editor Mary P Brooke has lived and traveled across this country, has had a wide range of career activities (both regular jobs and entrepreneurial), has raised a family of four children (now grown), and has kept her editorial eyes open the full way.
Ms Brooke was awarded a King Charles III Coronation Medal in 2025 for her commitment to community through professional journalism and her recent pivot applying that at a community level in the urban food resilience sector.
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- NEWS SECTIONS: CANADA-NATIONAL | 45th PARLIAMENT of CANADA | BUDGET 2025 | EDITORIALS