Statement regarding the spring economic update

Budget 2025 marked an important and clear change in direction by the federal government toward growth and investment. The spring economic update reinforces those ambitions with new initiatives aimed at helping the federal government execute on its agenda. 

The Business Council of Canada (BCC) applauds the government’s plan to create new pathways for young Canadians to get into the trades, representing a new investment of $6 billion over five years. Canada will need hundreds of thousands of additional skilled trades workers to achieve the government’s ambitious new agenda. The BCC has long been committed to developing a robust and capable future workforce in collaboration with governments, employers and educators and to that end created the Business + Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) in 2015. 

The newly announced sovereign wealth fund also gives the federal government an added tool to help foster new investment in key sectors, which is welcome.  Today, governments need more tools, not fewer. The BCC supports using fiscal policy to boost investment and productive capacity and welcomes the less-than-projected size of the deficit.

At a time of global unpredictability, Canada can offer investors much needed certainty by approving projects, deploying capital, reducing the regulatory burden, and making measurable gains in competitiveness.