The parliamentary budget officer projects Ottawa will blow past the new fiscal anchors set out in last week’s 2025 federal budget.

Interim budget officer Jason Jacques says in a new analysis of the budget that Ottawa is set to run an average deficit of $64.3 billion over the next five years — double the level set out in the federal government’s last fiscal update in late 2024.

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Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney’s talk of shifting government spending to capital investment rather than operating costs, Jacques says the deeper deficits

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