Mark Carney has prioritized infrastructure and defence spending per his Build Canada Strong policies/Carney X

The November 5th, 2026 federal budget will be the second of Mark Carney’s prime ministership — the unprecedented political leadership of a G7 economy by a former central banker for two G7 economies. For the second year, international factors — from Donald Trump’s trade war to the security implications of a ruptured world order, to the borderless rise of AI as a non-state actor — are weighing heavily in the government’s fiscal priorities and calculations. Welcome to our Policy Magazine Budget 2026 series.

In pre-budget opinion and analysis:

Amid the fiscal evolution from 10 years of Justin Trudeau’s prime ministership to Mark Carney’s, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada Director and Policy Columnist Daniel Béland explores the classic guns-vs-butter de-prioritization of social policy in the face of increased defence and infrastructure spending. “Prime Minister Carney, in contrast to Trudeau, has not emphasized social policy expansion,” writes Béland. “This is related to the current international context, as the trade war between Canada and the United States has fostered much uncertainty and the sense that Canada must strengthen its economic sovereignty, secure its self-defence capabilities, and diversity its trade alliances.” Here’s Daniel Béland with Social Policy and the Federal Budget.

Former Parliamentary Budget Officer and current president of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy Kevin Page and University of Ottawa economics student Abigail Sampson have filed two essential preview pieces for Budget 2026. “The Carney narrative begins with economic stabilization, but it succeeds or fails on whether that stabilization translates into measurable gains in productivity, investment, and living standards,” write the authors in the first, big-picture look at the economic context. “The central challenge for Budget 2026 is that the economy is no longer weak enough to justify broad stabilization measures, but not strong enough to make difficult fiscal and productivity choices unnecessary.” Here are Kevin Page and Abigail Sampson with Budget 2026 Preview: From Stabilization to Transformation.

In their second preview piece on Budget 2026, Page and Sampson argue that more transparency, understanding and debate on key fiscal indicators like public debt charges and non-budgetary transactions are needed “to bolster credibility and trust”. Here are Kevin Page and Abigail Sampson with Budget 2026 Preview: Guardrails and Blind Spots.

In budget-ask pieces, this was the first year we’ve ever posted an early one to coincide with the August 28th anniversary of the March on Washington and it’s a must-read. “We saw the Black Justice Strategy as a promissory note that would help remove an unjust burden from our children’s future,” writes Black Opportunity Fund CEO Craig Wellington. “Unfortunately, the government can’t live up to that promise under its current funding scheme. Canada’s Black Justice Strategy is a 10-year plan, yet the federal government has committed only two years of funding.” Here’s Craig Wellington with In the Spirit of Dr. King: Making Good on the Promissory Note of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy.

Visit us at Policy, where you’ll find our latest Policy Specials, Columns, Dispatches, Analysis, Book Reviews and Verbatim sections, plus The Week in Policy and our archived print issues.