In his 2021 book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, Mark Carney, now prime minister, wrote: “Companies exist to improve our lives, expand our horizons and solve society’s problems.”
Author
- Tracy Smith-Carrier
Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Royal Roads University
His government’s Budget 2026 , tabled Nov. 5 under the title “Masters of Our Destiny,” puts that belief into practice. It spends far more public funds rewarding and “incentivizing” the owners of large companies than it does addressing the affordability challenges Canadians face.
The budget offers tax breaks on private investment and capital gains, along with write-offs on capital purchases such as equipment. Corporations will collect them on investments they likely would have made anyway .
This is trickle-down economics, and it doesn’t work . Corporate welfare sends profits gushing up to the wealthy without necessarily yielding spillovers in jobs or economic growth.
More Canadians are going without
A string of reports released in recent weeks underscores the urgency of the moment . Apart from much-needed funding for housing and a welcome commitment to end homelessness within 10 years, the budget talks more about income and food security than it actually delivers.
The National Advisory Council on Poverty’s 2026 report, Too Many Left Behind, finds Canada is not on track to meet its commitment to cut poverty in half by 2030.
While poverty fell between 2015 and 2020, it has climbed steadily since 2021 . Food Banks Canada’s 2026 HungerCount report indicates that food bank visits have risen 117 per cent since 2019, and are almost nine per cent higher than last year . Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank documents a whopping 333 per cent increase over the same period .
The Salvation Army’s national report found that 31 per cent of Canadians surveyed in September had skipped meals or reduced their portion size because they couldn’t afford groceries .
Employment alone doesn’t guarantee food security either. The main earners in two-thirds of food-insecure households hold permanent, full-time jobs . Financial strain doesn’t just affect people with low incomes, although they feel it most acutely – the middle class is also feeling the squeeze .
Canada’s official poverty line misses much of this. The material deprivation index captures the number of households that can’t afford items or activities that most would identify as essential for a decent living standard .
Using 2023 data, Geranda Notten, a University of Ottawa professor of public policy, and colleagues found one in four Canadian adults couldn’t “afford two or more items that most people view as necessary to achieve an acceptable standard of living in Canada.”
In 2026, Richard Matern, director of research at Food Banks Canada, and colleagues found 28 per cent of people in Canada were living at a poverty-level standard . That is a far starker picture than the 11 per cent estimated by the Market Basket Measure .
The case for a basic income
Charity isn’t effective in remedying poverty and hunger .
Food banks can’t lift people out of poverty , and because food security depends on income , you can’t address hunger unless you improve people’s financial status .
We spend huge amounts treating poverty’s symptoms , and we do it ineffectively. That’s where a basic income guarantee becomes attractive.
Its principles include adequacy (incomes above poverty thresholds), non-conditionality (no strings attached), dignity (little stigma) and universal access (support for everyone who needs it). It rests on feminist principles of economic justice and human rights .
A wealth of evidence shows that cash transfer experiments and basic income pilots have positive outcomes: better food and nutrition , improved housing stability , lower hospitalization rates , reduced gender-based violence , enhanced educational performance , less worry and stress.
Patching an inadequate system
Canada’s income security programs are too small to change people’s finances in meaningful ways. Their narrow eligibility rules leave many people falling through the cracks, particularly working-age adults .
These programs aren’t built to tackle poverty or the affordability crisis, and the new budget does little to change that.
Take the Canada Child Benefit , a proven poverty-reduction tool . Many credit its overhaul with the significant drop in poverty in the late 2010s . But child poverty is on the rise again as living costs outpace benefits , and Budget 2026 doesn’t commit to increasing the benefit.
Nor does the budget improve the Canada Disability Benefit , which pays at most about $200 a month and comes with eligibility barriers .
No new spending was earmarked for the Canada Social Transfer, which funds provincial and territorial social programs and services, including social assistance programs. These programs are mired in stigma and dehumanizing indignities . Rather than alleviating financial deprivation, they trap people in deep poverty .
What Budget 2026 did fund was another one-time top-up to the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit : up to $339 for a single person without children and up to $679 for a couple with two children. That’s likely enough to cover about two grocery bills . To make a real dent, the benefit needs a lasting boost.
The budget also proposes making the Canada Caregiver Credit refundable, worth up to $1,260 a year. It would rename the Canada Workers Benefit the Build Canada Workers Benefit , slightly widening eligibility and raising the maximum for single people to $1,859 a year from $1,709.
These are helpful steps, but they aren’t robust enough while costs keep soaring.
Who the budget really serves
At a time when Canada should be introducing wealth taxes to curb dangerous levels of inequality , the budget’s centrepiece is the Productivity Mega Deduction. Estimated to cost $36 billion over five years, it offers corporations new cash and tax incentives.
A basic income, by contrast, is cost-effective and has majority public support . It would help not only the people who receive it, but also everyone who worries they might one day need it .
Canadians need long-term investments in their health and security. One-time top-ups and tinkering with existing, largely inadequate programs won’t cut it. Budget 2026 delivers a huge cash transfer to shareholders and the C-suite.
So whose futures were the “masters of our destiny” thinking about when they wrote this budget?
