🇨🇦 Ottawa builds budget on $73 oil while pocketing $100 — then pretends it's fiscal discipline

Champagne's spring update assumes West Texas Intermediate at $73 a barrel while it's actually trading around $100 thanks to the Hormuz crisis. That's not conservative forecasting — that's engineering a multi-billion-dollar slush fund. Every dollar above their lowball estimate means roughly $175 million more for Ottawa to burn through, and with oil futures showing $90+ through September, the feds are sitting on a windfall they buried in technical assumptions. Khan from the Institute of Fiscal Studies says it plainly: come fall, there will be much more room for this government to spend.

Translation — they're sandbagging revenue projections to justify another spending spree while lecturing Canadians about fiscal responsibility. Oil prices spike because of a Middle East war, and Carney's Liberals get a blank cheque they didn't earn and won't admit exists. Energy wealth extracted from the West, redistributed through Ottawa, all while pretending the budget was built on caution.

🍁 Maple Chronicles