Fall fiscal update set to be leaner than usual

Statement will be sales pitch to investors and Canadians

OTTAWA— Next week’s fall economic statement from Finance Minister Bill Morneau will be heftier than a typical fiscal update — the result, sources say, of its two major goals: convincing the public the Liberal economic plan is working and promoting Canada abroad as an enticing investment destination.

Those objectives have pushed the document, which Morneau will deliver Tuesday afternoon in the House of Commons, beyond its traditional role as a laundry list of refreshed predictions for growth and the federal bottom line.

At its core, the document will be a two-pronged sales pitch.

For institutional investors, it will help to promote Canada as a safe investment haven in an uncertain world for their firms, which together hold trillions of dollars of capital — money that could fuel the country’s economic engines.

Taxpayers will hear Morneau try to ease their fears about a growing deficit, arguing that Liberal measures such as infrastructure spending and richer child benefits have already begun to help at a time of deteriorating economic conditions.

Tuesday’s statement comes with the economy stuck in a slow-growth ditch following months of disappointing data and downgraded forecasts, and the Trudeau government engaged in an effort to pull it out.

“Our fall fiscal update will give people a sense of where the economy is right now, (and) it will give them a sense of what we see as the growth rate over time,” Morneau said Friday. “It will also give them a sense of the way that we’re going to work to improve our situation.”