Waiting for a fall fiscal update is too long

It’s fair to say that, with the uncertainty promulgated by U.S. President Donald Trump in all things economic, it’s hard to plan for next month, let alone the upcoming year.

Businesses like American Airlines are making that point clearly, telling their shareholders that they can’t forecast where their business is going in the upcoming year: “The company is withdrawing its full-year guidance at this time. American intends to provide a full-year update as the economic outlook becomes clearer.”

Delta Air Lines is living in the same fog: “Given current uncertainty, Delta is not reaffirming full-year 2025 financial guidance and will provide an update later in the year as visibility improves.”

Even business giants like Walmart are having trouble predicting what’s next, though their forecast errs on the wordy side: “Given the dynamic nature of the backdrop, and the range of near-term outcomes being exceedingly wide and difficult to predict, we felt it best to hold from providing a specific range of guidance for operating income growth and EPS for the second quarter. With a longer view into the full year, we believe we can navigate well and achieve our full year guidance,” said John David Rainey, Walmart Inc. executive vice-president and chief financial officer, in the company’s first-quarter filings.

Things change by the month, the week, and sometimes even the day.

Heck, it’s even fair to say that you might not want to make a clear and public plan, lest it ruffle the feathers of America’s disruptor-in-chief, for whom umbrage is a near-constant state of being. Individual companies have been the targets of presidential reactions when they’ve done things as simple as to show their customers how and where those customers will pay more because of new Trump tariffs.

You might consider all of that when you look at the new federal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney, and that government’s decision to not have a federal budget in 2025, and to wait until sometime in the fall, on a date yet to be set, to give Canadians an idea of the country’s economic situation.

Even then, the government wouldn’t present a costed budget for what it is doing — more a beefed-up fall economic statement, a document that usually maps out how successful the government has been at delivering its plans, rather than laying out the plans in the first place. Remember: the last fall economic statement was a hot mess of plans that didn’t come to fruition and a finance minister quitting before it was delivered, because she was about to be demoted and blamed for the fiasco.

There hasn’t really been a cogent fiscal roadmap since the federal budget in the spring of 2024. (And some would argue, even longer.)

The government has to let Canadians know enough of its plans so that we know where we stand.

Not having a budget plays into the optics that the Liberals are simply reverting to a “trust us, we know best” style of governance, one where Parliament doesn’t matter and that we should simply expect the prime minister and federal cabinet to do what’s right and necessary. To put it bluntly, with everything the Liberals were accused of under then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, the political optics are downright horrendous.

Waiting for some time in the fall to find out where we are is just not good enough.

Yes, these are chaotic times.

But the federal government should not be adding to the chaos by asking Canadians to fly blind and take matters economic on faith until the fall.