The 2025 budget, unpacked

Anjali Appadurai and Seth Klein are joined by Alex Hemingway (Senior Economist at BC Policy Solutions) to analyze the 2025 federal budget and the thin gruel that is the Climate Competitiveness Strategy. We also talk housing policies, alternative ways to generate revenue and Zohram Mamdani’s win in NYC!

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This episode aired on November 6, 2025. 

Produced by Anjali Appadurai and Doug Hamilton-Evans. Music by Anjali Appadurai. Artwork by Geoff Smith.

Transcript

Anjali Appadurai (00:05)
Hello and welcome back to Break in Case of Emergency. I'm Anjali Appadurai and today we are talking about what else? The federal budget. Today on the podcast we have the Climate Emergency Unit's own Seth Klein and I'm thrilled about our guest Alex Hemingway who's the Senior Economist at BC Policy Solutions. Welcome Seth and Alex.

Seth Klein (00:26)
Hi, good to be with you.

Alex Hemingway (00:29)
Nice to see you both. Thanks for having me.

Anjali Appadurai (00:31)
So excited to chat with both of you today. So yesterday, the Carney government budget 2025 was released and this has been described as the most anticipated budget since the mid 90s. It is the first budget of Mark Carney's government and it arrives amidst a moment of great economic uncertainty all over the world, but especially here at home. For decades, Canada has relied on the U.S. as its primary trading partner, but now in the wake of threats of Canadian annexation and in tariff program imposed by Donald Trump. This government is tasked with building a plan for Canadian economic independence and diversification while keeping us afloat through possible recession. And as we know, Carney is also known as the climate guy, and he's made campaign promises about taking strong action on climate and driving down Canada's emissions. And he's also talked about how climate action is not a nice to have, it's an economic imperative. And those are words that Carney himself has used.

But this budget, it doesn't match his words. We see the nail in the coffin of consumer carbon pricing. We see the green lighting of new major fossil fuel projects. And egregiously, we see the rolling back of hard won legislation that required fossil fuel companies to be honest about their greenwashing claims. Now, so many of us, those of us here on the chat today, social movements, experts, advocates, we've known for...

Many generations that the true path to a strong independent economy is not by doubling down on the extractive industries that got us here in the first place. It's by investing in the parts of the economy that provide value for human life, a strong labor market, know, the care economy, which is a whole range of health and education, jobs and services and a climate safe future. But instead of that, we see a budget that invests heavily in the military and oil and gas while making over $60 billion in cuts to services.

And instead of leading the energy transition like we could be doing, Canada has fallen behind regions like Asia that have seen the opportunity and are leading on renewable energy technology. And perhaps predictably, this budget leaves international assistance by the wayside, cutting the program by 800 million a year. And this also applies to our international climate finance commitments, which were not mentioned in the budget. So that is bad news for our fair shares program, which ⁓ the Climate Emergency Unit has been working on for the last few years.

But in some brighter news, there is something in there that we at the Climate Emergency Unit have fought for for years and it's the Youth Climate Core. I know Seth is gonna talk about that later, but the budget does include the creation of a YCC and a small investment in the infrastructure for it. So it's a start and something to build on. So here we are, it's ⁓ the...

You know, this massive 400 page document has been released and I'm curious to get your first impressions. So Alex, over to you. What were your impressions as you read this budget?

Alex Hemingway (03:31)
Yeah, I think you summed up the moment so well, Anjali. And one thing that stands out to me is, you know, we're in this moment of ⁓ threat from Trump, of tariffs, you know, the annexation talk that's been going on all year, and we need to be thinking about sort of nation building. And that's become this term of art for the Carney government. you know, I think there's a big contradiction in you know, talking about the need for a nation building and bringing forward a budget that is substantially cutting back on the public service federally, that's doubling down on fossil fuels, as you're saying. You know, some of the biggest items in the budget are military spending, are tax cuts that largely benefit those at the very top. There are some bright spots, including, you know, funding for infrastructure, some funding for housing. to me, it's not a ⁓ budget that meets the moment. it's really, ⁓ know Seth will get into the climate side of this ⁓ deeper, and you all know more about that than I do. thinking about ⁓ investing in infrastructure right now as we're doubling down on fossil fuels, we're going to be building up the infrastructure that climate change is going to be helping to stress and destroy in the decades to come. And that's one of the things I couldn't help but think about yesterday.

Anjali Appadurai (05:07)
I mean, you talked about the investment in housing and we know that there was in the budget 13 billion allocated to the Build Canada Homes program and then perhaps hand in hand with that this municipal infrastructure investment of five billion a year. ⁓ Can you speak a bit more to that and is that investment enough and what's it going to do?

Alex Hemingway (05:27)
Well, a few things stand out. yeah, they're talking about a $50 billion local infrastructure fund over 10 years, as you say, $5 billion a year. That's positive. We do need to reinvest in our infrastructure, but there are some key caveats. One is a lot of that's repackaged ⁓ from existing infrastructure funds. So it's not actually not even entirely clear how much is new. ⁓ This happens again and again in budgets, but...

The Canada Public Transit Fund is being partially repurposed. The ⁓ Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund, Canada Community Building Fund, you know, there's this alphabet soup of infrastructure funds that were already in place and some of it's being repackaged into this new ⁓ program that they framed as an intention to launch. ⁓ Similar story, you know, on housing, we already saw the Build Canada Homes program announced over the summer and in the fall. There's not really a lot new in this budget document, but I think one of the things that stands out for me on the housing file, and we're seeing this all over, there's been so many different housing policy announcements, whether it's federally, provincially, or locally over the past couple of years. ⁓ And you could be forgiven for thinking that the government is all over the housing issue. mean, they've got it a dozen different programs going at once. But there's a disconnect between the scale of what they're doing and the scale of the need on housing, I think in two important dimensions. One is, you know, there is reinvestment in ⁓ dedicated, affordable, non-market housing, ⁓ but it's much smaller than what we need. you know, Build Canada Homes, the first tranche of projects is talking about 4,000 homes.

That's great. We need those homes. That is a tiny drop in the bucket. They're saying it could be expanded to as much as 45,000 homes. Well, again, you know, our recommendations have been that nationally we need to be looking at at least 100,000 non-market homes each and every year. So that's, you know, it's operating on a different scale. And the same is true in terms of enabling more overall home building on the market side of housing because there is a severe housing shortage. need to do that. There's been tons of rhetoric about, we're going to double home building. But the policies that are have been announced today, there's a complete disconnect between that and how you're going to get to doubling home building. just want just and I'll finish on this. I mean, thing that stands out to me, it remains the case despite.

all of that rhetoric that if you look at our big cities, Vancouver, Toronto, buildings are building new apartments is banned on the vast majority of the residential land in those cities. That doesn't make sense from a housing policy perspective. It also doesn't make sense from a climate policy perspective. We know how much cities and denser housing are important to reducing emissions. So big disconnects there from my perspective.

Anjali Appadurai (08:33)
Seth, do you wanna jump in there?

Seth Klein (08:36)
Yeah, well, just an overall take on the budget. First of all, I agree with everything both of you have said. ⁓ You know, think if I for much of the public, it must be very confusing, right? Like they're hearing that it's an austerity budget in many ways. And yet the deficit is quite a lot larger than it was the last time we saw a budget. ⁓ So this one is 78 billion dollars. So how could that be? How is it both a cutting budget and yet we're spending more? And I think, so first of all, it is, we are seeing some significant cuts, right? They are really cutting back over the next few years on operating spending, program spending. They're going to be reducing program spending by about 60 billion over the next five years, and they're gonna reduce the size of the federal public service by about 40,000 jobs. That's significant. We have not seen something of that scale ⁓ since the mid-90s. ⁓ So how is it that we're still seeing an increase? So one piece of it is that ⁓ this is very much a manufactured crisis because of all of the tax cuts.

Right? when, when, ⁓ Carney, you know, among the first things he did when he took over from Justin Trudeau was he reversed course on a plan to make capital gains taxation more fair. ⁓ that costs, ⁓ that, that, that, that's foregoing about 19 billion over the next five years. ⁓ he brought in this so-called middle income tax cut that has a cost of 28 billion over the next five years. He backed off on the digital services tax that costs a 6 billion over the next five years. So we've foregone a whole bunch of revenues. then there are these big, you know, while there's overall cuts in program spending, we're seeing this huge ramp up in military spending. ⁓ And then, you know, as Alex was saying, we are seeing some modest increases in community infrastructure, municipal infrastructure, and on housing. ⁓ Overall, it feels, so what does that mean? mean, at some level, it's not really an austerity budget. It's not austerity for the military. It's not austerity for fossil fuels. It's not austerity for border security. ⁓ It's just austerity for the things that matter to protecting people and services and the planet. ⁓

And then I'm struck by the fact too that, ⁓ you know, there's all this lofty language from Carney about build, build, build at speed and scale, but really other than the direct expenditures on the military and as we've said, you know, some direct expenditures on housing and community infrastructure, he's really kind of...the encourager in chief here. There's a lot of pleading with the private sector, cajoling, know, making concessions, including to the fossil fuel sector, sort of pleading with them to come forward with private sector investment. ⁓ And I'm unconvinced that a lot of it's going to happen.

Anjali Appadurai (12:13)
Yeah, so we're really seeing this budget of opportunity costs and some of these opportunity costs are very steep. Where are the cuts coming from? ⁓ Alex, was there anything in the budget that stuck out to you with regards to where that austerity is coming from and where the cuts are being made ⁓ that you thought was a missed opportunity?

Alex Hemingway (12:38)
Yeah, it looks like a lot of the details of the cuts are still to come. did see ⁓ some folks ⁓ recognizing with some relief that the cuts to ⁓ women's programs were, that was one of the departments that seemed to be ⁓ shielded from the cuts that people were really worried about. But I think, you when we look around us and the big challenges we're facing ⁓ as a society and at a time like that to be reducing the capacity of government to address those issues with these big cuts to our federal public service, that doesn't make sense. We have big problems to figure out. need expertise in government to find the way forward on issues like climate change and housing. so I think we should be really worried about that obviously we're recording here in BC and we've seen the consequences of that. We saw deep, deep cuts to the provincial government 20 years ago and a struggle that continues to this day to move forward on files like healthcare where that internal case has been so eroded. So I think we should be concerned.

Anjali Appadurai (13:58)
Yeah, I was struck when I was listening to the CBC coverage yesterday just by the tone, you know, they're having commentator after commentator on for a few minutes each. And most of them were just like, this is this is underwhelming. This is disappointing. And then there was this one guy who was the CEO of a military drone company. And he was like, he was like, he was like, wow, we certainly have the money for everything we want to do in this budget.

It was just such a stark contrast, like where the cuts are coming from and who's flush with cash at the end of this.

Alex Hemingway (14:34)
Well, and it's wild. mean, know, Seth, you've pointed this out in the past, you know, as activists and experts have pushed for scaling up climate action in the past few years. And, you your book calling for a wartime style mobilization on climate, ⁓ you know, is always well, you know, wouldn't that be nice, but how can we possibly afford it? And as soon as we're talking about military spending, suddenly the floodgates are open. You can spend two, three, four, 5 % of GDP, which is this incredible sum of money on the military. It just gives light of the whole austerity discourse. the funny thing too is, some of these folks in the corporate sector like to go on about efficiency and avoiding inefficient taxes and deadweight loss in the economy.

There's nothing that's more of a deadweight loss in terms of public investment than military spending. We're buying assets that are built for destruction. They're not contributing to the long-term productivity of our economy or making people's lives better.

Anjali Appadurai (15:48)
Exactly. speaking of building the parts of the economy that are productive to us, climate safety and a climate safe future. So I want to ask you about climate in the budget. We know that there was this climate competitiveness strategy that was kind of shoehorned into the budget. What was that all about? What did we see on climate in this this budget?

Seth Klein (16:09)
Yeah, well, ⁓ big picture. don't think there can be any doubt that ⁓ this simply confirms a major retreat on the fight of our lives. ⁓ It's not a focus of the government. ⁓ know, it's been signaled for some time that this climate competitiveness strategy was coming. ⁓ You know, it was initially supposed to be a new standalone, you know, in-depth approach. Instead, it's basically a 10-page section buried in the middle of the budget. It's pretty thin, gruel. There's not a lot of detail. And I think it's safe to say that the climate movement is pretty disappointed by all of these retreats. You know, there's this very annoying line that the government keeps using, and it's...

and it's included in this strategy, which is that it's based on driving investment, not on prohibitions, on results, not objectives. And just to stand back, just to reflect on this. ⁓ So first of all, it is indeed all about trying to and attract private sector investments. When all is said and done, the government's overall approach to climate remains almost entirely based upon carbon pricing, industrial carbon pricing, and a package of tax credits, hoping that these two things would signal to the private sector that they should, you know, step up to meet this moment is not going to work. We've had ample evidence from the last few years, the last 10 years that this approach doesn't work. It's no way to prosecute the fight of our lives.

when the government and Carney say, you know, we don't want this to be about prohibitions. I mean, I don't even know what to make of that. The ⁓ most significant climate policy we have seen in Canada, like the policy that by far in a way deserves the most credit for what modest reductions we have seen, is the Ontario government's decision to prohibit ⁓ coal ⁓ fired electricity. Like that alone.

And that's a prohibition. Like, prohibitions actually work. ⁓ And they're saying, no, we are not interested in that. And we don't really want clear objectives. We're interested in results. Okay. But, you know, one should be guided by objectives and goals ⁓ so that you have something to measure those results against. ⁓ Overall, I mean, this is a budget that really favors the oil and gas sector over climate.⁓ and is filled with these concessions ⁓ to the oil and gas sector. ⁓ So they've certainly set the stage. know, the climate movement has been working for a number of years now on getting an oil and gas emissions cap. The budget basically signals that that's not going to happen. ⁓ And instead, they're going to focus on ⁓ on an industrial carbon price. Theoretically, a really robust ⁓ industrial carbon price could achieve as much or more, ⁓ but who knows? All they say in the budget is that the system needs a revamp and it remains entirely unclear what to expect from that. Then there's this whole package of tax credits. The most generous of those tax credits is reserved for carbon capture and storage. So this whole, which is really at the root of this garbage line about ⁓ decarbonized oil.

And it's going to rep, if it actually proceeds, ⁓ it's going to represent a massive public subsidy ⁓ to some of the most profitable and destructive corporations in human history. ⁓ You know, then there's, you know, tax credits for nuclear and ⁓ even on clean electricity, instead of direct investments in like an inter-provincial grid, they're, it's all reliant on tax credits. ⁓ You know, will that produce some results? Yeah, it'll produce some results, but not at the scale ⁓ that we need. ⁓ And as you mentioned off the top, ⁓ you know, one of the few victories in the last couple of years was this change to the Competition Act ⁓ to crack down on greenwashing. Here was this claim. that simply said to corporations, if you're going to make environmental claims, you have to be able to substantiate it. And the budget basically says, no, we're not going to require that anymore. Effectively, you're free to continue making garbage claims about what you're doing. I find this particularly ironic coming from Carney because he's supposed to be the guy who's all about disclosure and climate disclosure.

And here was a rule that would say to companies, yeah, if you're going to make claims, you have to be able to back it up. ⁓ You know, we've heard a lot of pushback from industry that somehow they dubbed this green hushing. And the fact that we were requiring this meant that they were backing off their climate commitments. I think all that tells us is that those climate commitments were never really worth the paper they were written on. ⁓ That if they had to substantiate it somehow.

That was asking too much.

Anjali Appadurai (21:59)
Mm-hmm. It was a pretty disappointing budget climate wise and ⁓ that greenwashing ⁓ anti-greenwashing win was so big earlier this year and we saw, you know, overnight when that legislation was passed or that change to the Competition Act was passed. we saw the website of the Pathways Alliance, which is a conglomerate of oil and gas companies, we saw their website got completely wiped overnight because ostensibly their entire website was not in compliance. It was an exercise in greenwashing. So it was just such a stunning win to see that website be wiped overnight. And they kicked up a big fuss.

Seth Klein (22:44)
They spent the subsequent year and half relentlessly lobbying to get that rule chucked and it appears that they were successful.

Anjali Appadurai (22:53)
Yeah. So I want to zoom out a bit to this whole, you know, overall strategy that both of you have really outlined, which is inviting and cajoling private participation in investment rather than just making bold public investments and regaining the revenue in other ways. ⁓ And, you know, Alex, I want to ask you a little bit about how that plays out in the housing investment.

Like how that balance plays out, you know, we have ⁓ someone now in charge of Build Canada Homes that is ⁓ definitely more on the developer side. It's definitely looking to be inviting more private investment in housing. How will that play out ⁓ in this Build Canada Homes program over the next couple of years, you think?

Alex Hemingway (23:45)
Yeah, I think that remains to be seen. They're certainly pitching Build Canada Homes at this point as a non-market focused program. And there are elements to liken there. I appreciate that emphasis that they're saying we want to get back into the non-market housing space in a significant way as a federal government, that they're thinking about doing prefabricated, manufactured offsite housing as a way of, you being able to build housing at a lower cost. are positive things. ⁓ I think, and we talked about this earlier, to me, the big disconnect on that side is ⁓ the scale and the lack of ambition in the plan. We've come through a period of several decades where we've been chronically under-investing in non-market housing. And if we're gonna catch up on that as we badly need to,

A program like Build Canada Homes needs to be a lot more ambitious than rolling out 4,000 units in the first year. ⁓ actually, think that, ironically, I think they're not being ambitious enough on the market housing build either. This government, including under Trudeau, has brought forward programs like the Housing Accelerator Fund, trying to... put essentially put money on the table for municipalities in exchange for local reforms that would enable more home building. But each time they brought in one of these policies, they've actually been extremely weak on following through in terms of those municipal commitments. know, Toronto recently ⁓ rejected even small scale multiplex housing in many of its neighborhoods and they haven't seen any consequences for that, even though that was one of the conditions for the Housing Accelerator Fund program. So I worry about that. And in the election platform, ⁓ the Carney liberals had ⁓ said what we want to do is ⁓ bring forward this new infrastructure funding and use that in part to cut development charges on new housing in half. ⁓ actually, think that's actually a positive thing.

Funding infrastructure specifically by taxing new housing is not ⁓ a progressive way of raising revenue. It suppresses housing creation, it raises rents. It's ultimately paid on the backs of renters and new home buyers because rents and prices ⁓ increase. But they've actually backed off from that promise as well in the budget. They're just saying now, okay, we're going to provide this infrastructure funding. There's nothing about conditionality around ending exclusionary zoning, ending apartment bands, and ⁓ they ask for some sort of reduction in those taxes on new housing specifically, but the idea of cutting them in half is gone. And having seen the way these promises have slipped over the past few years, that doesn't give me much ⁓ confidence in what they're going to do. So to me, it's very ironic in that the supply side of the housing question has gotten so much rhetorical support from this government and governments at all levels, but they're not even actually delivering on that side of the equation, let alone on the non-market side, which is equally or more important.

Anjali Appadurai (27:25)
Okay, so really I think the crux of this budget is that the massive trade-offs that were made ⁓ and the where the government has chosen to spend and where they've chosen to cut. you know, Seth, I always say that I think one of the great talents that you bring to the table is your economic imagination and you know, this understanding of what are the tools on the table that a government could use to generate the very necessary revenue to actually transform our economy, to make it climate safe, to make it a more equitable, sustainable economy for the future. And it seems in this budget that a lot of those tools have been left on the table. I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that.

Seth Klein (28:12)
Yeah, it does feel like a lot of ⁓ revenue options were just left out entirely. ⁓ It's striking to me that in the context of an economic ⁓ crisis and the fact that we're all supposed to rally together, that this is a budget that does not, and a budget that has ⁓ cuts for ⁓ programs that ordinary people rely on the budget makes no ask of the wealthiest among us and profitable corporations to increase their contributions. So there's no wealth tax, there's no windfall profits tax. ⁓ Quite the opposite, as I said, off the top, we actually cut a bunch of taxes that disproportionately benefit those at the top. And that's striking to me because they could have actually raised billions and billions of additional revenues ⁓ if they chose.

Anjali Appadurai (29:20)
Yeah. And Alex, you've done a lot of great work on a wealth tax and a windfall profits tax. Could you speak a little bit to, you know, in an alternate universe, if we'd had ⁓ those taxes implemented in a budget like this, what that could have done, how much that could have raised and what that money could have gone towards?

Alex Hemingway (29:38)
Yeah, and I think Seth's point really hits home with the Prime Minister talking about people needing to make sacrifices. Who's being asked to make sacrifices right now? A wealth tax, so we published a report earlier this year looking at the revenue potential of ⁓ a comprehensive federal wealth tax that would target those at the very top of the distribution. So if you're in the richest 1%, you're actually not quite rich enough for this wealth tax. You have to be in the richest half of 1%. And so a moderate wealth tax at that segment could raise $40 billion in its first year and with revenue rising each year after that. So it's very significant on the scale of a budget like this when you're looking at a budget with, what was it, $60 billion of cuts. And similarly, you know, think that Seth, touched on this earlier. ⁓ The other, I think, biggest potential federal revenue raiser is the capital gains tax. There's a fundamental unfairness in our tax system, which says that income that you get from capital gains is taxed at half the rate of income that most Canadians get through doing work through their labor. ⁓

Trudeau government had taken a small step towards reforming that and then it was immediately reversed. ⁓ But there again, you're looking at if we equalize the tax treatment of capital gains income, which overwhelmingly flows to the richest 10 % and then within that to the richest 5 and 1%, ⁓ you're looking at tens of billions of dollars per year in revenue that would be available just from dealing with that basic unfairness in the tax system and of course that can also go towards addressing the scourge of inequality that we face in this country and that also contributes to distorting our political system when we have so much wealth concentrated at the very top. So those stand out to me.

Seth Klein (31:55)
Yeah, you know, just building on Alex's last point, think that's when we talk about the need to raise these taxes, it isn't only because we need to increase revenues and we need the money. It's also because this is how we tackle inequality and restore social solidarity, which is what we need when we are asking people to engage in a big undertaking. I'm also struck, by the way, that one reason why there's a decline in revenues is because when it comes to dealing with Trump, the current government keeps making concession after concession that is costing the treasury. So I mentioned off the top that they ditched the digital services tax and that that cost six billion over five years. They've also ⁓ backed away from all of the counter tariffs ⁓ that the Trudeau government originally brought in.

⁓ Again, trying to appease ⁓ Donald Trump and hoping that he reciprocates, and yet we've seen zero sign of that. That's billions of dollars again ⁓ that we have forfeited. And one of the things I've dearly wished to see is even as we're struggling to, there is stuff in the budget around specific supports for the sectors that are being...hard hit by the Trump tariffs for aluminum and for autos and forestry and steel and canola. But we're having to pay all of that ourselves ⁓ when we could have brought in an export tax on our oil and gas exports to the U.S. Something we know Trump cares about because oil and gas have a special place in his miserable heart. A 15 % export tax on our oil and gas exports to the U.S. could raise $25 billion a year to pay for all of those supports for the industries that have been particularly hard hit. None of those kinds of options were considered.

Anjali Appadurai (33:58)
Yeah, and so we know that there's a lot of tools that were left on the table and Alex, I mean the numbers ⁓ from the BC Policy Solutions report that show that a wealth tax could generate 40 billion just in its first year alone and you know, set the export tax 25 billion. I mean, when you add up all these tools, you know, what do you think it would take for this government to start making different choices about where revenues coming from? What would it take for them to start treating the private sector differently and not like cajoling them along? This is a very open-ended question. Obviously, know, one answer is movements.

Alex Hemingway (34:41)
I think the wealth tax is an interesting case study there because I think it does take you to the answer that it's largely movements that would be needed to make that possible because from a purely political perspective, wealth taxes have pulled extremely well. 80 to 90 % support, support crossing party lines, including to the conservative side of the spectrum.

So when you have a policy that's that popular and yet is nowhere to be found on the political agenda of a government, I think that tells you something about the deep distortions in our democracy ⁓ and the lack of reflection of ⁓ public priorities and ⁓ opinion in our policy and that, you know, this is the type of ⁓ policy that has to be forced onto the agenda by bio-lively and active social movement.

Seth Klein (35:43)
Social movements in working in collaboration with a genuinely progressive political party so that we're shifting the calculation there. mean, the political reality is ⁓ the federal liberals have moved decidedly to the right. They felt the political threat to be on the right ⁓ and they're trying to eat Pierre Poliev's lunch and effectively have done so by tabling a budget this week, which is to my mind, a kind of Stephen Harper budget. ⁓ And that's in the context of an NDP that doesn't have official party status ⁓ and a Green Party with one seat. So we're going to need to see a reliving of the political left working in partnership with those movements to change the political dynamic.

Anjali Appadurai (36:37)
Right. ⁓ Of course, the other big thing that happened yesterday is ⁓ last night we saw a historic win in New York with Zoran Mamdani being voted in as as New York's mayor. That ⁓ that win and the whole campaign, I think, has sent ⁓ ripples across across the world, but definitely across progressive movements. And, ⁓ you know, I think there are a lot of lessons that we can take from that here. think it speaks very much to what you just said, Alex, about these policies being popular and having much more public support than we think. And ⁓ also just the need to shore up that that groundswell to actually demand these policies and to demand, you know, an evening out of those distortions that you talked about. So, yeah, I think the Mamdani win is quite a juxtaposition to this budget.

Seth Klein (37:35)
for sure.

Alex Hemingway (37:36)
Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

Anjali Appadurai (37:38)
Next time around, maybe. Okay, well, I do want to talk about a bold policy ask that had a little bit of a bright light in this budget. And Seth, I want to throw over to you to talk about the Youth Climate Corps, which was a rare win.

Seth Klein (37:55)
Yeah, have mixed feelings about all of this, but I do think we need to take the win when they come along. obviously the campaign for Youth Climate Corps has been a flagship campaign for us at the Climate Emergency Unit. And after years of campaigning, it finally broke through and it was announced as a new public program in the federal budget.

The budget announced $40 million over two years for YCC starting next year. So I just want to acknowledge and recognize that for the hundreds of young activists and their allies who have pressed hard for this, ⁓ it's a real welcome relief. And I do think it's a win, especially in the context of a budget that decreases overall program spending and represents a significant retreat on climate.

⁓ Yeah, I think that needs to be recognized. On the other hand, know, a victory lap is tempting, but I think the reality check is $40 million over two years is a rounding error in the federal budget. ⁓ And, you know, despite the lofty language about, you know, generational investments for young Canadians, at $20 million a year, the YCC will produce roughly 350 full-time jobs, meaning as many as would populate a typical elementary school. And that's for the whole country. ⁓ And it means that at this level, it's simply not a program that's going to be terribly consequential in terms of tackling either youth unemployment or the climate emergency. And oddly, it just feels like that there's such a disconnect between the lofty language we hear from this government about building at speed and scale and all these transformational moments and then this very modest budget allocation. And it's also in stark contrast with the billions that are now gonna pour into the military. ⁓ So it is a win, but I don't think we wanna overstate it.

⁓ It is a new program. You know, we had this worry that they would just cut a check to some nonprofit or contract it out. It appears that that's not what they're doing. It'll be a paid program. That was another win because there was a worry that they would kind of make it as a volunteer thing. ⁓ And it's the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of young activists and campaigners. ⁓ And so, that the task I think is now gonna fall to us to hold the government to account, to make sure it's well designed, well structured, well governed, that it's guided by the principles that we've been saying should guide the program. ⁓ So now we're gonna have to keep it up ⁓ and to keep the pressure up to up the ambition. Let this program achieve the scale that it...can and should achieve if it's actually going to live up to its transformational potential.

Anjali Appadurai (41:24)
Yeah, watching these young people work over the last few years has been nothing short of inspiring. All right, so we have covered a lot of ground today and we've picked this budget to bits. Is there anything else that you're thinking of as we wrap up this conversation, Alex?

Alex Hemingway (41:40)
boy, I'm still thinking about Mamdani now. How exciting that is. You got my brain worried.

Anjali Appadurai (41:45)
We could talk about how it works.

Seth Klein (41:51)
People should watch the victory speech on YouTube. It is truly inspiring.

Alex Hemingway (41:57)
And he's, mean, one thing that stands out to me is he brings, you know, like you were saying, Anjali, these bold solutions to the table for which, you know, there is a public appetite and he does it in a way, you know, with a message that's really unifying and laser focused. And the third piece though, that stands out to me is he seems like a genuinely curious, open person who wants to get the policy right and deliver. remember. seeing an interview with him about, you know, they're talking about opening the city run grocery stores to deal with ⁓ food inflation and NYC. And he said, look, I want to do this as a pilot. And if it works well, if this turns out to be a helpful solution to this problem, we'll expand it. And if it doesn't, we'll learn from that and move on. I've seen him talk in similar ways about the housing side of the equation. know, social housing is front and center, what he's putting in the window  but he's also talked about, you know, increasingly recognizing the merits of, of sort of the, the, the YIMBY perspective on housing and needing to deal with zoning and needing to deal with the overall shortage. So he's a fascinating figure and I'm, I'm really excited to see what he does in, office.

Anjali Appadurai (43:14)
⁓ Yeah, I think that's a great pairing, the Canadian budget and Mamdani's win.

Alex Hemingway (43:24)
Those were the two biggest things that happened yesterday. So it's good that we covered them together.

Anjali Appadurai (43:29)
All right, well, Alex, thank you so much for for joining us on this conversation. It's really, really great to hear your insights.

Alex Hemingway (43:40)
Thanks a lot for having me. It was fun.

Anjali Appadurai (43:43)
Yeah, it's good to just make sense of these big complicated things and just to know what we're dealing with for the next few years. So thank you so much and great to hear your insights and I'm always inspired by your work on ⁓ reducing inequality. And as we know, that's step number one to tackling the climate crisis and to fixing everything else. So really appreciate your work on the wealth tax and everything you're doing at BC Policy Solutions.

Alex Hemingway (44:12)
That's a mutual feeling with the climate emergency unit. yeah, was several years ago sad to lose Seth as a boss, but if he was going to go on to do a next thing, ⁓ this is a pretty great one.

Anjali Appadurai (44:25)
Yeah, it's nice that we're in the ecosystem together and thank you Seth as well. All right, this has been Breaking Case of Emergency. You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts. So please do like and subscribe and we welcome feedback in all forms. So feel free to reach out anytime. It's been great having this conversation about Budget 2025 and we'll see you in the next one.

Seth Klein (44:30)
was fun.