THE CAPITAL SHELL GAME

There is a very old trick in politics:
when you can’t actually shrink government… you just rename the growth.

That’s exactly what Mark Carney is doing here.

He is standing on podiums bragging — not subtly — that he is “reducing operational spending”, while at the SAME moment manufacturing an explosion of brand new federal agencies, national strategies, national offices, national funds, national bureaucratic arms and national enforcement bodies.

This is not “fiscal discipline”.
This is accountancy camouflage.

Budget 2024 created almost nothing new.
Budget 2025 suddenly fabricates an entire constellation of new government apparatus — but instead of calling them operational costs (which they are), they magically call them capital investment.

It’s like Carney is taking the most basic household lie and scaling it to a federal industrial grade:

“No honey, I didn’t increase spending. I just bought more stuff and called it ‘assets’.”

This is the exact kind of linguistic sleight-of-hand Peterson warns about — the corruption that begins with language, re-framing, euphemisms, concept manipulation, category distortion. When you cannot defend reality on its own terms, you redefine the terms.

This isn’t government getting leaner — it’s government getting fatter with different labelling.

We now have brand new agencies, brand new national strategies, brand new funds, brand new government operational ecosystems that will require staffing, pensions, lifetime budgets, program administration structures, offices, oversight bodies, boards, audits and political guardians.

This chart tells the whole story without a single paragraph of spin.

In 2024, Canada added virtually no new federal bodies. We were not spawning new agencies, new permanent bureaucratic structures, or new national programs. It was status quo government — bloated, inefficient and expensive…but at least not multiplying.

Then 2025 hits — and suddenly we have an entire universe of brand new agencies and national strategies popping into existence.

Ten times more.

This is why the “reduced operating cost” claim is a fiction. You don’t create this volume of new departments, new mandates, new national oversight regimes, new program governance structures — and somehow magically reduce the cost to operate government.

This is expansion. Period.

And here’s the sleight-of-hand that makes this chart nuclear:
Carney is not counting these as operational costs. He is calling them capital.

This chart visualizes the deception.
This isn’t smaller government — this is bigger government with different accounting terminology.

If any household CFO did this, the bank would shut down their accounts immediately.

Government just calls it policy modernization and hopes you won’t graph it.

Those are operational costs.
Always have been.
Always will be.

Reclassifying them as capital doesn’t change their nature — it only changes the public optics.

This is why people stop trusting politics.

Because at some point, people expect honesty about what things are.
You cannot put a tiger in a field, paint it brown, and call it a cow.
It’s still a tiger.
It still eats.

Carney is now running the country like a Silicon Valley startup pitch deck — make the optics look smaller, more efficient, more investment-oriented — while quietly ramping expansion behind the scenes.

This budget is not austerity.
It is empire-building — masked as productivity growth.

They are calling this “Capital Budgeting Framework” a modernization.
It’s really a laundering mechanism to smuggle program expansion under a different accounting class.

And this matters… because these new agencies DO NOT go away.

Once you create federal machinery — it never dies.
It only metastasizes.

Ottawa doesn’t retire departments — it multiplies them.

So this 2025 budget is not about tightening the belt — it is about constructing an entire new layer of state that will generate decades of ongoing operating burdens… simply re-badged as capital on day one.

Carney knows exactly what he is doing.
This isn’t incompetence.
This is intentional framing.

Jordan Peterson often says:
corruption begins not with evil intentions — but with the corruption of categories.
The moment you stop telling the truth about what something IS, is the moment you give yourself permission to do anything with it.

Budget 2025 is where Canada crosses that threshold.

This isn’t just a fiscal debate anymore — this is the moment where reality is replaced with narrative.

And narrative is easier to manage than numbers.

Here is the list of new agencies and programs announced that I am sure will involve hundreds of millions of dollars in spending, not to mention, expanding the government’s size even more.

The following table provides an overview of our newly launched projects. It details each initiative and identifies the primary agency responsible for its implementation.

Name	Type	Description / Purpose	Why This Creates Ongoing Operating Cost
Defence Investment Agency (DIA)	New Federal Agency	Central body to coordinate, finance and manage national defence procurement and industrial capacity.	Requires staffing, oversight bodies, procurement officers, compliance systems, long-term administration.
Financial Crimes Agency	New Federal Enforcement Agency	Canada’s lead enforcement agency for sophisticated financial crimes.	Requires investigators, analysts, cross-jurisdictional enforcement teams, ongoing cybersecurity staffing.
Build Canada Homes (BCH)	New Federal Agency	Dedicated housing development and delivery arm to execute major national home-building portfolio.	Housing planning, approvals, financing structures, data reporting, and operational planning are not one-time capital — they are recurring staff/admin.
Major Projects Office	New Government Office / Approval Body	Designed to accelerate approvals, coordinate mega projects, reduce bottlenecks and politically “shepherd” national infrastructure.	Permanent operational coordination, policy analysis, legal support, intergov compliance → all ongoing cost centers.
BOREALIS – Bureau of Research, Engineering and Advanced Leadership in Innovation and Science	New National Bureau	Centralized research bureau to support defence-relevant R&D and industrial capability.	Research bureaus are pure OpEx machines — talent, labs, administration, R&D cycles are perpetual burn.
Office of Digital Transformation	New Federal Office	To modernize digital service delivery across government.	Digital modernization requires permanent infrastructure, cybersecurity, continuous service management.
Trade Diversification Strategy	National Strategy	To shift trade dependency risk and build new international trade partner ecosystems.	Strategies require program managers, international engagement teams, continuous policy updates and monitoring.
Climate Competitiveness Strategy	National Strategy	To guide federal investment, tax credits, industrial alignment toward green competitive advantage.	Strategy execution → permanent cross-ministry coordination, reporting, policy governance workload.
Defence Industrial Strategy	National Strategy	Rebuild Canada’s domestic defence supply chain capacity and production base.	Industrial strategies create a permanent federal intervention footprint — audits, supplier screening, standards, contracts.
National Anti-Fraud Strategy	National Strategy	Formal coordinated national anti-fraud policy response.	Real-world fraud enforcement = permanent operational task force and ongoing administration.
International Talent Attraction Strategy & Action Plan	National Strategy / Program	Recruit global top research talent.	Immigration support, research alignment, visa support networks — continuous operational resourcing.
New AI Strategy	Strategic Program (Under Development)	Develop Canada’s AI national posture, policy, governance, industrial alignment.	AI governance is ongoing — not one year of policy drafting.
Defence & Security Business Mobilization Program (BDC)	Federal Program	Helps SMEs scale capability into defence sector.	Permanent funding intake, evaluation, program administration staff.
Small and Medium Business Procurement Program	Federal Program	Improves SME access to federal procurement.	Evaluation cycles, data management, program staff to maintain fairness & enforcement.
Strategic Response Fund	Federal Program / Financing Mechanism	Realignment fund to support industry adaptation to global shocks.	Funds always require permanent oversight, evaluation frameworks, risk committees.
Trade Diversification Corridors Fund	Federal Infrastructure Fund Program	Funding mechanism for trade-centric corridors.	Funds require multi-year administration and oversight.
Arctic Infrastructure Fund	Federal Infrastructure Fund Program	Dedicated fund to support northern trade infrastructure.	Again — ongoing program management and federal administrative staffing.
Automatic Federal Benefits (2026 launch)	Federal Administration Program	Auto-benefit filing infrastructure for simple returns & federal benefits.	Ongoing data ingestion, CRA systems maintenance, identity assurance & fraud protection.