OTTAWA
The Liberal government is preparing to table its 2026 budget on Thursday, but its own focus groups suggest Canadians are not watching the state of federal finances closely.
Finance Canada commissioned market research firm Environics to host a series of roundtables with Canadians roughly a week after Ottawa tabled its spring economic update on April 28.
Over a week, Environics conducted 10 online focus groups across the country involving 73 people, divided between younger and older Canadians.
"Top of mind awareness of the spring economic update was very low, even after participants had been prompted about it having taken place," the final report, delivered on June 4 and recently published online, found.
The report noted focus group participants expressed "little concern about the deficit." Most felt there was no point in trying to balance the budget quickly, given disruptions from U.S. tariffs and the war in the Middle East.
"For most, the deficit is just a number and they had little sense of what that really meant or how it affected their personal lives or standard of living," the report stated.
Many participants did tell Environics they understood on some level that running deep deficits can harm the economy and there should be a plan to bring borrowing under control.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre regularly rails against the Liberals over deficits and is urging the government to cut wasteful spending ahead of Thursday's budget.
The Liberal government claims its fiscal guardrails, shrinking the deficit as a share of the economy and borrowing only for capital investment starting next year, are keeping it on a sustainable track.
Awareness was low even when it came to the Liberals' landmark affordability measures, Environics found.
Few participants reported knowing about the Liberals' grocery and essentials payment, which replaced and expanded the previous GST benefit for lower-income households.
A pause on the federal fuel excise tax was viewed positively, Environics reported, but some confused it with the Liberals' move to kill the consumer carbon price a year earlier.
The spring economic update also included a plan to spend nearly $6 billion to foster more careers for young Canadians in the skilled trades.
"Most participants had not heard anything" about such a plan, the report said, adding most reacted favourably when informed about it.
Only two or three older participants who labelled themselves as "news junkies" reported being aware of a spring economic update, the Environics report noted.
There was stronger awareness of Prime Minister Mark Carney's travels overseas to find new trading partners for Canada, and a broader recognition of American news stories over Canadian ones.
That was particularly true among younger participants, who reported getting more of their news from TikTok and Instagram, where Environics noted U.S. news is more prevalent.
Despite the low awareness, Environics said that after they were told about the contents of the plan, participants' "opinions were mixed but generally neutral to positive."
"Many participants noted that they did not have high expectations from the federal government in the first place," the report said.
Finance Canada uses regular roundtables to get a sense of how the public is responding to its efforts to guide the economy.
"The use of qualitative research allows the department to get a clear and current sense of the evolution of the public mood towards the state of the economy, the sense of personal economic well-being and government actions in the economic sphere," the report states.
This week's budget will show whether a tailwind from higher global oil prices has offset the surge in federal spending commitments since the spring economic statement.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney took office in 2025, he reversed the federal government's fiscal schedule, the budget is now tabled in the fall, and mid-year updates in the spring.
This story was written by the e2gold.ca newsroom from reporting by BNN Bloomberg, CTV News and Winnipeg Sun. Quotes are checked word for word against that reporting.