Wednesday October 22, 2025 | OTTAWA, ON [Filed at 9:20 pm PT VICTORIA, BC | Updated 8:47 am October 23, 2025]
News analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
For the past couple of weeks Prime Minister Mark Carney has been releasing general aspects of Budget 2025.
The budget itself is scheduled for release on November 4. [Also see: ECONOMY | 45th PARLIAMENT]
This evening in Ottawa the setting for his pre-budget speech was at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Choosing a young adult audience is possibly a harbinger of some tough things to come in the first Carney budget. Youth and young adults have already experienced financial and societal challenges for a decade or more. What’s more to come?
Carney was introduced by Ottawa-area MP Mona Fortier (Ottawa-Vanier-Gloucester), Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Austerity and investment:
Carney has said in recent weeks that the budget will offer austerity as well as investment.
It’s known that defence spending will increase. And the prime minister has now promised that social programs to help families (e.g. child care, school food programs) will not be diminished.
Sacrifices ahead:
But it could be seen as worrisome that he has forwarned the younger generation of working-age adults that times will be tough and that sacrifices will need to be made.
“It will take some sacrifices and it will take some time,” said Carney this evening.
Where sacrifices will be asked of Canadians, Carney said his government will be “thoughtful, transparent and fair”.
“We will have to change how we do some things, but not change who we are,” said Carney, as a way to bolster the remaining wisps of ‘elbows up’ that already seem distant.
Carney said that Canadians will need to do “less of what we want to do so we can do what we must do”. That might inspire some young adults to take on the battle of what seems like tough times ahead. For many, however, it sounds quite sobering.
Lessons from the past:
Many things in Canada started wearing thing or not even being done over the past 10 years — but with other circumstances enduring for longer than that such as residual economic impacts from the pandemic and before that the Great Recession of 2008 (at least on households that still carry the impacts of sudden unexpected debt from that time).
The significant attention to defence spending and building major national projects shows a country heading toward greater economic resilience. But it could very well look and feel a lot different than life as most adults under 40 have ever known.
Families whose older relatives remember the experience of the impacts of the Great Depression and WWII may have passed on the knowledge (of not the trauma) of those difficult times. It could be a silver lining to have that information in one’s realm of understanding.
Big picture:
Carney got elected based on voters believing that he is the leader to stand up to Trump and protect Canada from economic ruin or even becoming ‘the 51st state’.
Canada’s economy and sovereignty are indeed vulnerable in the US administration’s onslaught.
If Carney is indeed fighting for Canada’s very economic and national survival against Trump, he’s going to need Canada’s young working generation — and their bright ideas in business, education and politics — to help keep the hope of a nation alive.
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