Carney will miss target for balancing operating budget, PBO says - National Post

Minister of Finance Francois-Philippe Champagne and Prime Minister Mark Carney meet before the Spring Economic Update is delivered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa April 28, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable /PostmediaArticle contentOTTAWA — A new report by Ottawa’s fiscal watchdog raises questions about when the government will eliminate its operating deficit, despite Prime Minister Mark Carney saying last week that the government now expects to balance its operating budget a year earlier than the original goal.

Based on the information that the government released in its 2025 budget and this spring’s economic update, the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) projects that Ottawa will miss its target of balancing the operating budget by 2028-29 by a year.

The PBO says Ottawa spent about $546.6-billion on operating expenses in 2025-26 and $34.5-billion on capital costs.

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The report also says the Carney government’s treatment of some of its budget items is contradictory, raising further questions about the government’s decision last year to split its spending into two distinct ledgers.

The PBO said Thursday the federal government needs to do more to sort out its definitions for capital versus operating items, wiggle room that many economists say will tempt governments to lump as much spending as possible into the rosier-sounding capital side.

That temptation will be particularly alluring for the Carney government because it’s facing massive deficits for the foreseeable future and established a key fiscal target last year of eliminating the operating deficit by 2028-29.

In a document called The Government’s Operating Budget Fiscal Anchor, the PBO says it seems contradictory to classify the government’s Agricultural Clean Technology program as a capital cost, for example, while its Agricultural Climate Solutions program is on the operating side. Both programs, the PBO says, are designed to trigger farm investments.

“This makes it difficult to anticipate how future spending will be sorted,” the PBO report says.