Susan Delacourt: Today’s politicians ignore affordability at their peril - Toronto Star
There’s a clear line connecting the U.S. midterm election results to the budget being unveiled in Canada on Thursday, Susan Delacourt writes.
Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne speaks to the media ahead of the release of Thursday’s federal budget following a tour of the Pajar shoe factory in Montreal, on Nov. 4, 2026.
Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on X: @susandelacourt
Officially, Mark Carney’s government is saying that the Republicans’ stunning losses in the U.S. midterm elections are the Americans’ own business.
But this government also knows that there’s a clear line connecting the midterms to the budget being unveiled in Canada on Thursday — and that’s the affordability crisis.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne acknowledged it when he spoke to reporters at a Montreal shoe factory on Wednesday. Asked to comment on what had happened in the U.S., Champagne kept coming back to affordability.
“If we go in the streets, it’s the price of rent, it’s the price of food, it’s the price of gas. That’s a reality for Canadians every other day, every week, every month,” Champagne said.
Dominic LeBlanc, the point minister on Canada-U.S. relations, said that while he watched the results with interest, he was more focused on affordability here. “That was our focus yesterday. That is actually our focus today and will be the focus tomorrow in the budget.”
What both ministers are saying is that all politicians, both north and south of the Canada-U.S. border, ignore the affordability crisis at their peril. Champagne’s chief job in Thursday’s budget is to reassure Canadians that this government gets it.
In a lengthy interview with me in advance of the budget, Champagne was a little more open about how events in the U.S. reverberate in government here. He talked about how people see events unrolling on their TV screens and then immediately see the results at the gas pump or the grocery store.
Back in the spring, when the government put out its economic update, it also floated a couple of scenarios for its fiscal outlook, acknowledging Canada’s economy was being shaped by forces not entirely within its control. The more optimistic one was a forecast in which Middle East turmoil drives global demand for Canadian energy and investment flows in. In the less optimistic one, the same turmoil disrupts supply chains and weighs on growth.
The budget on Thursday will be the first real accounting of which world Canada is actually living in. When I asked Champagne which scenario was closer to what we’d see in the budget, he didn’t entirely answer the question, but noted, “The level of change has been accelerated.”
It will be interesting to see how much the budget has been influenced by the disintegrating Canada-U.S. relationship — a lot of it would have been written in the shadow of the breakdown in trade talks in August.
If there is any flutter of optimism after the trouncing of Trump’s Republicans on Tuesday, that’s unlikely to be in the actual budget.
Champagne has said it will go heavy on themes of Canadian identity and culture, presumably seizing on the surge of patriotism that Trump has inspired in this country. He hinted broadly about support for artists and culture.
“When the world is changing at speed, it’s grounding to go back and say, ‘This is who we are as Canadians,’” he said.
When I pointed out that some artists are experiencing affordability issues too, Champagne said that’s been the case for a while now. But the finance minister clearly wanted to flag that the government wants to do something with this budget to help people tell those stories.
In the interview, Champagne kept circling around to talk of “megatrends” — how Canada is experiencing the same kinds of uncertainty and forces that are being felt around the planet.
“One thing that doesn’t lie is megatrends,” he says, in what was likely a preview of the scene-setting he wants to do for the budget.
He said this is frequently brought up in meetings with his international counterparts. “It’s the speed of transmission from global events to pocketbook issues.”
Donald Trump, in his own way, confirmed that reality too when he was conceding the Republicans’ defeat in the immediate aftermath of the midterm results. But he also said he had no regrets.
“I don’t think about it. I did the right thing. I would have done it again,” he said. Vice-President JD Vance echoed this sentiment in a lengthy social media post: “If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest.”
The budget here isn’t facing the reckoning that came for the Republicans this week, but its challenge will be to grapple with what Trump failed to grasp — that we’re living in times where every event, large and small, is becoming an affordability issue.
Champagne told me he gets it. He said what he’s heard from people in advance of the budget is, “Do everything you can to just help me out now.”
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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
Susan Delacourt is an Ottawa-based columnist covering national politics for the Star. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on X: @susandelacourt
