Is the Ford government's approach to balancing the budget truly comparable to Trudeau's, as the author suggests? Why or why not?
Given the significant increase in Canadian defence spending, what are the potential risks of prioritizing domestic firms in procurement decisions?
The Ontario budget lays bare Ford’s Trudeauian fiscal policy
More than a decade ago, Canadian conservatives rightly criticized Justin Trudeau’s now-infamous claim that “budgets will balance themselves” as an expression of fiscal irresponsibility. It reflected a self-evidently false belief that governments could avoid difficult choices and rely on economic growth to close the gap.
Yet the Ford government’s latest Ontario budget is a version of that same false logic in practice.
The fiscal facts are straightforward. Ontario has moved from a near-balanced position to a sizeable deficit in a single year. Revenues are essentially flat while year-over-year spending is rising by roughly 3 percent. The result is a deficit that has increased by an order of magnitude.
This point must be underscored: the province’s deteriorating balance sheet isn’t so much a consequence of worsening economic conditions outside of the government’s control as it is a direct result of its own budgetary choices.
Although the budget still commits to a return to balance over the medium term, the path that it sets out doesn’t rest on obvious policy changes. Instead, it depends on stronger economic growth and a future slowdown in spending that’s neither specified nor demonstrated.
Sean Speer’s Weekly Wrap analyzes three key issues: Ontario’s budget, Canada’s defense spending, and AI’s role in publishing. The Ontario budget is criticized for resembling Trudeau’s fiscal policy, relying on economic growth rather than policy changes to balance. Increased defense spending raises concerns about prioritizing domestic firms over capability and potential mismanagement. Tyler Cowen’s AI-integrated book exemplifies how AI can transform publishing, offering personalized and interactive reading experiences. Speer suggests this could revolutionize learning and writing, making books more dynamic and useful, though the core value of authorship remains essential.
Defence spending is rising from roughly $30-40 billion to more than $60 billion annually, with a trajectory that could push toward $80 billion by the end of the decade.
Ontario’s year-over-year spending is rising by roughly 3 percent.
Is the Ford government's approach to balancing the budget truly comparable to Trudeau's, as the author suggests? Why or why not?
Given the significant increase in Canadian defence spending, what are the potential risks of prioritizing domestic firms in procurement decisions?
How might AI integration, as exemplified by Tyler Cowen's book, change the roles of authors and the experience of readers in the publishing industry?
In effect, the government has relinquished its agency over balancing the budget. It has outsourced it to economic growth and to rosy assumptions about future restraint. There’s good reason to be doubtful that either will eventually come to pass—especially since as the Fraser Institute reminds us, this is the fourth time in a row that the Ford government has pushed off surpluses that were projected in previous budgets. This is, to put it bluntly, a Trudeauian fiscal policy. And the problem, of course, is that as the Trudeau era reminded us, budgets don’t balance themselves. They ultimately reflect choices. That’s the biggest takeaway from this week’s Ontario budget. Whatever the premier or finance minister claim, the Ford government has abdicated its responsibility to balance the budget. The danger lurking in Canada’s increased defence spending Prime Minister Mark Carney rightly took credit this week for news that Canada has hit NATO’s 2 percent defence spending target for the first time in decades. Yet one gets the sense that Canadians neither understand the magnitude of the government’s incremental defence spending nor the emerging debate about how it should be allocated. These questions have huge implications for Canadian defence policy and taxpayers themselves. Defence spending is rising from roughly $30-40 billion to more than $60 billion annually, with a trajectory that could push toward $80 billion by the end of the decade. That’s an extraordinarily fiscal expansion and a huge sum of public spending. It’s about the equivalent of what Ottawa spends on health-care transfers. But it’s not just the price tag that’s notable. It’s the growing argument in some quarters that the government should overwhelmingly prioritize Canadian-owned firms in its procurement decisions. Appeals to economic development and national sovereignty have obvious resonance in the current moment. But they risk subordinating defence and security considerations to domestic politics. At a practical level, privileging domestic firms can slow procurement, raise costs, and limit access to the most advanced systems—especially in a world where interoperability with the United States and NATO allies is essential. Defence procurement isn’t like buying office furniture. It’s about capability, integration, and timing. There are also deeper political economy concerns. Large and rapidly growing budgets predictably attract pressure from regions, industries, and organized interests. We’re already starting to see evidence of this. The result can be cost overruns, delays, and outright mismanagement. The ultimate risk is a misalignment between what the military needs and what the political system rewards. None of this is an argument against Canadian firms. They should be free to compete, and modest preferences may be justified at the margin. But making domestic ownership a primary criterion risks distorting decisions at precisely the moment when they matter most. The danger is that Canada’s long-overdue defence buildup becomes a costly and distortionary exercise in rent-seeking. I’ve previously written for The Hub about the Bricklin—a quixotic effort by the New Brunswick government to establish a provincial automaker in the 1970s. One gets the sense that there’s a growing risk that the Carney government’s defence policy could become the equivalent: a Bricklin for bullets. Is AI integration the future of publishing? In recent weeks, the Weekly Wrap has taken a particular interest in artificial intelligence and its economic, political, and social implications. This week, it’s worth turning to a more concrete question: what might AI mean for the future of publishing? Economist and past Hub Dialogues guest Tyler Cowen has just offered a possible answer. His new “generative” book, The Marginal Revolution: Rise and Decline, and the Pending AI Revolution, are his ideas and words, but it’s AI-integrated. It comes with an interactive AI interface that fundamentally changes how the reader engages with the material. Instead of simply reading the book, you can interact with it. A reader can ask for clarification on a dense passage, request a simpler explanation of a technical concept, or prompt the system to expand on a particular argument. You can ask how Cowen’s claims relate to other economists, push back on a conclusion, or explore a tangent that the printed text only briefly touches on. In effect, the book becomes something closer to a conversation or personalized seminar than a fixed, one-way text. The experience is surprisingly fluid. It feels like an extension of the author’s work—one that allows readers to engage the material at their own level of curiosity and knowledge. The implications for publishing are significant. For general readers, it offers a more engaging and tailored experience. For students, it may be transformative. Imagine a textbook that doesn’t just present information, but adapts to the learner—explaining concepts in different ways, testing understanding, and filling in gaps in real time. The line between book, tutor, and classroom could begin to blur. It also has implications for authors. Rather than anticipating every possible reader question in advance, writers can focus on building a strong core argument and allow the AI layer to handle clarification or elaboration. That could change how books themselves are written. None of this means the end of publishing per se. If anything, Cowen’s experiment suggests the opposite. The value of authorship—of clear thinking, structured arguments, and distinctive voice—remains intact. What changes though is the medium through which that value is delivered. Books may become less static and more interactive. Less like finished products and more like platforms for engagement. Cowen’s generative book points to such a future in which reading is more dynamic, more personalized, and, ultimately, more useful. And unlike some of the more speculative AI applications, this one isn’t far off. It’s arguably already here. In the Weekly Wrap, editor-at-large Sean Speer analyses the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was, exclusively for Hub subscribers.
Sean Speer is The Hub’s Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well as a think-tank scholar and columnist. He previously served as a senior economic adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
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