War crimes condemnation eclipses budget

The federal budget delivered by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Thursday is not getting rave reviews from the opposition benches.

Though it is being supported by the NDP, as per the recently reached confidence-and-supply agreement brokered between Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh, even Singh says the Liberals could have done more to address the climate crisis — a sentiment shared by the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois.

The Conservatives were sharper in their criticism, with interim leader Candice Bergen calling it “a budget funded by Canadians suffering from inflation.”

“Canadians need a break and they didn’t get one from the Ndp-liberal budget today,” she said.

People hoping to see stimulus spending to kickstart the economy, real measures to combat the high cost of living and a boost in the Canada Health Transfer were met instead with a wide-ranging, $31-billion spending plan with support for everything from dental care to arts and culture, climate change, the military, and a federal LGBTQ2 action plan.

Among the most substantial pledges was $4 billion over five years to create 100,000 new housing units, but that spending relies on co-operation between multiple levels of government and won’t do much to alleviate the affordable housing crunch in the short term.

The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation dismissed it as “another credit card budget with no plan to pay the bills on time and chip away at the $1-trillion debt.”

But what was remarkable about Freeland’s budget was the speech which accompanied it — a speech that was the federal government’s strongest statement yet about the war in Ukraine, and one which some pundits have compared to U.S. President Joe Biden’s recent comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin has to go.

In outlining the government’s plan to hike defence spending by $8 billion, including $500 million for weapons for Ukraine, Freeland made it clear that sanctions against Russia are insufficient.

“Our rules-based international order, built from the ashes of the Second World War, today confronts the greatest threat since its inception…” she said.

“Russia has become an economic pariah, but the mutilated people of Bucha, shot with their hands tied behind their backs, have shown us that is not enough,” she said.

“Putin and his henchmen are war criminals. The world’s democracies — including our own — can be safe only once the Russian tyrant and his armies are entirely vanquished.

“And that is what we are counting on the brave people of Ukraine to do. Because they are fighting our fight — a fight for democracy. It is in our own urgent national interest to ensure that they have the missiles and the money they need to win .…

“The world’s dictators should never mistake our civility for pacifism. We know that freedom does not come for free, and that peace is guaranteed only by our readiness to fight for it.”

For that, Freeland received a standing ovation — and left the people of Canada wondering what comes next.