The first federal budget in more than two years extends Ottawa91裸聊视频檚 COVID-19 91裸聊视频渓ifeline91裸聊视频� for workers and struggling businesses another few months as it aims to pull Canada through the pandemic once and for all.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland91裸聊视频檚 first crack at a budget plan is also widely viewed as a pre-election platform with more than $100 billion in new spending over the next three years targeting a wide variety of voters, from seniors and their caregivers, to parents and business owners.

91裸聊视频淭his budget is about finishing the fight against COVID,91裸聊视频� Freeland said, in her budget-day speech. 91裸聊视频淚t91裸聊视频檚 about healing the economic wounds left by the COVID recession. And it91裸聊视频檚 about creating more jobs and prosperity for Canadians in the days and decades to come.91裸聊视频�

The government will need to get at least one opposition party to support it to avoid a pandemic election this spring.

Canada91裸聊视频檚 net debt is now over $1 trillion for the first time ever, after a $354 billion deficit for the pandemic year just over. It is expected to keep climbing with deficits of $155 billion this year, and $60 billion in 2022-23.

That is driven in part by more than $100 billion in new spending over the next three years, including costs to maintain federal wage and rent subsidies and aid for laid-off workers, until September now, instead of cutting them off in June.

Freeland is also looking ahead to the post-pandemic Canada the Liberals want to see, one that has $10-a-day childcare, the ability to produce its own vaccines, national long-term care standards and small- and medium-sized businesses equipped with the workers and technology they need to survive.

It also includes a greener, cleaner Canada, with a promise of more than $17 billion in climate change programs, much of it in the form of incentives to encourage heavy industry to curb their emissions and grow Canada91裸聊视频檚 clean technology sector.

All of it comes with a pandemic-sized asterisk that things could still change drastically if vaccine supplies are delayed or they prove not to work that well against emerging variants of the virus. The budget includes alternative scenarios that show where the fiscal picture might go if the worst-case scenarios of the pandemic play out.

Those risks seem even more real as the country is battling the worst wave of the pandemic yet with record hospitalizations and patients in critical care, and doctors and nurses warning repeatedly of a health care system on the brink of collapse.

Freeland acknowledged the weight the pandemic continues to bear on Canadians.

91裸聊视频淲e are all tired, and frustrated, and even afraid,91裸聊视频� she said. 91裸聊视频淏ut we will get through this.91裸聊视频�

The pandemic has thrown everything off course for more than a year, including the plan the Liberals intended to use after the 2019 election. For the Liberals first four budgets, every one went with a title about the middle class 91裸聊视频� growing it, investing in it, making it stronger.

This time, Freeland 91裸聊视频� who is making history as the first female finance minister to table a federal budget 91裸聊视频� went with 91裸聊视频淎 recovery plan for jobs, growth and resilience.91裸聊视频�

That plan focuses on helping some of those hit hardest in the last year 91裸聊视频� sectors like tourism, as well as low-wage workers, small and medium-sized businesses, women and young people.

Mia Rabson, The Canadian Press

Like us on and follow us on .

Want to support local journalism? Make a donation