Canadians are looking to next week’s federal budget to signal that Ottawa understands the strain that the rapidly rising cost of living has put on household finances says a new poll done exclusively for Global News by Ipsos.
“Canadians are in many parts of this country, really, really feeling the pressure, especially people with more precarious employment, women, people with kids at home — people who are under real pressure as a result of what they see as an unplanned, rising cost of living that they’re now having to manage,” said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs. “And they’re looking to this budget for a signal from the government that they got it and that they’ve got some ideas about how to deal with it.”
Ipsos asked 1,500 Canadians in an online survey completed between March 11 and 16th to list their three priorities for the 2022 budget, which will be tabled April 7.
A majority — 53 per cent — listed “help with the soaring cost of every day needs due to inflation” as one of their three top priorities. That was followed with 45 per cent listing “lowering taxes” as a top priority and 40 per cent telling the pollster that “greater investments in healthcare” ought to be a priority.
Bricker said the mood of the country on the eve of this budget is significantly different than other years. In other years, climate change, green infrastructure, Indigenous reconciliation and other themes often associated with the Trudeau government’s “Build Back Better” messaging were higher priorities among the electorate. Those issues now have a lower priority, according to Ipsos polling.
“What we’re seeing is people much more focused on just the day-to-day affordability of their lives, and that aligns with a lot more pessimism coming out this time from the pandemic, and a real belief that we’re now suffering the personal economic consequences that were associated with the pandemic,” Bricker said. “It’ll be interesting to see if the government, through this budget, is able to pivot from that to that, as opposed to their ‘build back better’ agenda, which seemed to be that positive, making-the-world a better place type of an agenda.”
The federal Conservatives, in fact, are hoping for just that kind of pivot.
“Fighting inflation, getting spending under control, alleviating the tax burden on Canadians. These are the things I’m looking for,” said Ed Fast, the B.C. Conservative MP who is also his party’s finance critic.
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Yet, the just-concluded Liberal-NDP confidence-and-supply agreement is mostly about the kind of vision associated with progressive “Build Back Better” budgets. The NDP will vote in favour of this budget and the next three budgets, per that agreement, so long as the Liberals hold up their end of the bargain by making progress on implementing national pharmacare, dental care, indigenous reconciliation while doing more to fight climate change and make housing more affordable.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland signalled the budget she is writing would address affordability issues.
“Our government was re-elected on a commitment to grow our economy, make life more affordable and to continue building a Canada where nobody gets left behind,” Freeland told the House of Commons last week. “That is exactly what we are doing and that is what we’re going to continue to do in the budget that I will present to this House on April 7th, 2022, at 4 p.m.”
Freeland’s challenge will be trying to fulfill multiple and expensive political obligations during a time of high inflation and global geopolitical unrest. The commitments made just months ago in the Liberal election platform are likely to cost $50-billion over five years; commitments to the NDP are likely to cost $13-billion; boosting defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP as many other NATO members are now doing could cost as much as $25-billion a year; and the provinces are pushing for billions more in annual health transfters.
“I think they’re going to have to pull off some kind of alchemy to get all of this to work, ” said Sahir Khan, executive vice-president o fthe Institude of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa and former member of the Parliamentary Budget Office. “I don’t envy the government, but they’ve got to squeeze that much in political commitments into a really small space and remain fiscally sustainable without increasing taxes.”
To get a sense of how difficult the government’s choices may be, consider this: housing affordability was identified as a top three priority by 21 per cent of respondents in the Ipsos poll but 21 per cent also said reducing overall government spending was a top three priority and cutting the deficit was a top priority for 20 cent. In other words, do more but spend less.
Bricker said that when the electorate thinks about housing affordability it is no longer in the context of providing more social housing or housing for low-income Canadians. It has now become an issue for the middle class, particularly middle-class women, who worry about their own families being able to buy a home and worry especially about their children’s ability to buy a home.
Ipsos found declining support for other budget priorities:
- 17 per cent said the budget should help businesses still struggling with the pandemic
- 16 per cent supported more spending on a transition to green energy
- 11 per cent support financial incentives for Canadians to lower their carbon footprint
- 11 per cent support increased defence spending.
“I think Canadians are not saying that they don’t want the government to spend money on defence,” Bricker said. “But in terms of the priorities that they have in terms of their relative situation, the personal situation in their day-to-day lives, what’s happening to you today matters more than anything else.”
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