The parliamentary budget officer is projecting inflation will return to the Bank of Canada's two per cent target by the end of the year and the federal deficit will grow amid weakening economic conditions.
The federal government may find itself with billions more in spending room on the back of soaring oil prices that experts say could lower the deficit, or give the Liberals space to fund a bevy of campaign pledges.
Newly released documents show the Finance Department last year warned that the pace of price increases could gain speed, even as the Liberal government and central bank maintained that inflationary pressures were temporary.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland plans to release an updated accounting of federal finances today and provide the government's economic outlook for the coming months.
The Trudeau Liberals are set to unveil an update on the health of federal finances and its outlook for the economy while facing competing demands on benefits, taxes and economic growth.
The federal government says it ran a budgetary deficit of $268.2 billion through 10 months of its fiscal year as the treasury pumped out more pandemic aid.
Nearly two million Canadian workers could remain unemployed this year, according to forecasts in the federal government's long-awaited "fiscal snapshot."
Nearly 5.4 million Canadians are receiving emergency federal aid, with hundreds of thousands more claims waiting to be processed, the federal government said on Monday, April 13, 2020, providing another snapshot of the economic fallout from COVID-19.
The political war-of-words around the national economy took another turn on Sunday's, December 22, 2019, political talk shows as the federal finance minister warned Conservatives to cease claims of a looming recession.
A new preliminary estimate says the federal government posted a budgetary deficit of $1.4 billion through the first two months of the current fiscal year.
