When parliament comes back into session on September 15, the newly elected federal government is going to try to move swiftly to pass its legislative agenda. With a minority parliament, the governing Liberals will need to work with other parties in order to pass legislation—as they have already done with the Conservatives . in order to pass legislation removing supposed internal trade barriers in Canada.

Such collaboration, particularly between the Liberals and the Conservatives, is a sharp Policy alternativesbreak from the pre-election parliament, when the Liberals and NDP had a supply-confidence agreement and the Conservatives had been using procedural manoeuvres to systematically block all legislation from advancing.

While the current Liberal-led government’s cross-party collaboration strategy remains unclear, it has a major agenda planned—much of which will begin taking form this parliamentary session. Let’s see some of the major outlines.

A fall budget with major cuts to public services to pay for military spending

The government has made clear its intention to table a federal budget this fall—the first since 2024. Often in upcoming budgets we’re watching for some details on existing programs, but this time around it’s really carte-blanche—we have a newly elected government that had a platform in the election, but it almost immediately sidelined that platform for massive new military spending, way beyond the scale of anything outlined in the platform. To pay for that spending—and “middle class” tax cuts—the government is now talking about much larger cuts than those it promised in the platform.

I’ve been closely tracking the potential impact of federal budget cuts. We could see the loss of 57,000 jobs by 2028 , which can only hurt service levels. But over half of the “savings” from these cuts is cuts to transfers to other bodies, like First Nations governments, provinces, and non-profits. As governments always do, politicians will pitch this harsh austerity as “efficiency.” They will also frame this as “AI” helping government services—which sounds great, until you need your passport renewed or a tax problem fixed. I’ll be watching closely in the fall budget, and elsewhere, for any further hints about what these cuts will mean and who’ll be hit hardest by their service impacts.

—David Macdonald, CCPA senior economist

 Slowing climate action in favour of “national interest” megaprojects

Climate action has fallen by the wayside under this government, even as the country faces yet another historic summer of wildfires—the harbingers of a climate crisis that continues to escalate out of control. The greatest litmus test during this session of parliament will be the forthcoming selection of major projects in the “national interest.” The government created a streamlined approval process for those projects last spring—a process that bypasses certain consultations and environmental reviews—under the Build Canada Act. We’re expecting to see a list of these projects from the newly formed Major Projects Office (MPO) in the fall.

Will the government prioritize clean power, low-carbon supply chains and electrified industry, setting up the economy for independence and prosperity in a decarbonizing world? Or will it double down on support for the oil and gas industry, which is not only the sector of the economy most responsible for our climate problems, it’s the most deeply integrated with the current U.S. regime? Expect an “all-of-the-above” approach from this government—a troubling capitulation to the status quo at precisely the moment we should be restructuring the economy for the better.

—Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, CCPA senior researcher

Ongoing negotiations with the U.S. over trade deals

The federal government’s trade agenda this fall will grapple with known knowns, known unknowns and possibly some unknown unknowns, to paraphrase a ridiculous former U.S. defence secretary.

The first category includes expected legislation to ratify a couple of pre-Trump free trade deals with Ecuador and Indonesia. Opposition to the first is intense in Ecuador, especially among Indigenous nations and environmental groups opposed to Canadian mining projects and the extreme investor protections in trade deals that shield mining companies from democratic oversight. Opposition to the Indonesia agreement is growing as well for the same reasons.

The timing and substance of a promised new trade and security deal with the Trump administration and the expected review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement remain known unknowns. Prime Minister Mark Carney said not to expect “white smoke” soon, but assured Canadians sectoral deals to lower Trump’s spurious metals tariffs are in progress. Those tariffs contributed to a 1.6 per cent contraction to Canadian GDP in the second quarter, as exports drop and U.S. manufacturing output continues to shrink.

The unknown unknowns are, of course, whatever new plague on the Canadian economy President Trump pulls out of his backside between now and the winter holidays.

—Stuart Trew, CCPA senior researcher and chair of the Trade and Investment Research Project (TIRP)

Workers need protection of their jobs and their rights

In this fall budget the federal government first and foremost needs to commit to protect Canadian jobs. With procurement, investments, major projects such as in transportation, and balanced trade agreements, this government can signal that it’s got the back of Canadian workers.

Secondly, the federal government has been tipping the scale towards employers in federally regulated collective bargaining, most notably with Air Canada flight attendants, by referring disputes to arbitration using Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code. The Air Canada CEO revealed that he was counting on the government using Section 107 to end the CUPE strike. In this budget the government needs to reaffirm a commitment to free collective bargaining and do away with this administrative denial of workers democratic rights.

In addition, while the government has recently extended Employment Insurance (EI) benefits for unemployed workers, too many unemployed workers (more than 60 per cent) do not qualify for  benefits under the current rules. EI needs serious reform to adapt to a changed economy where many workers have multiple jobs with variable hours. All need protection with EI and at a liveable level of benefits.

—Peggy Nash, CCPA Executive Director

Border militarization and increased surveillance

One of the major pieces of legislation that the government will be trying to advance this fall is Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act. The massive piece of legislation runs at 140 pages long, and would make significant changes to the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, as well as the Oceans Act and the Canada Post Corporation Act. It’s the type of legislation that would have Donald Trump salivating—massively increasing police powers at the border in order to deal with the mostly nonexistent threat of fentanyl trafficking from Canada to the U.S.

It allows for border agents to open mail packages, and grants police new, warrantless access to certain types of identifying information for internet users (the Supreme Court struck down similar provisions as unconstitutional in 2014). It opens the door to greater information sharing of Canadians’ data with U.S. security agencies. It also allows the federal government to mass-revoke visas for entire groups of people, not just for individuals—creating the legal infrastructure to allow for Trump-style mass deportations.

Dozens of civil liberties groups have been campaigning to get Bill C-2 withdrawn, and both the NDP and the Conservatives have been critical of the bill—making its future in a minority parliament uncertain. If opponents of the bill are able to get it scrapped or significantly rewritten, it would be the first major victory against this government’s increasingly right-wing agenda.

—Jon Milton, CCPA senior communications specialist

New federal public housing program

In the 2025 federal election, the Liberal platform included some important new plans to boost the development of new affordable housing, including a proposed Building Canada Homes (BCH) program that would put federal land on the table and re-engage the federal government in building new publicly owned housing. The devil, as they say, will be in the details, as we have heard little from the feds and new housing minister Gregor Robertson through the summer. We’ll be watching for more details in the fall budget.

With the limitations of for-profit development now on full display in the form of a condo crisis hitting the largest markets, a more direct federal role in housing is much needed. Public policy can reduce up front housing costs, leading to lower rents on resulting projects. The trick is to lower the whole stack of building costs—land, construction, financing and development charges—which, in turn, lowers the resulting rents. Federal policy can positively affect each of these cost drivers to produce more affordable units. Building publicly owned buildings on public land through BCH would create long-lived assets that pay for themselves over time through the resulting rental income.

Done right, BCH would ultimately be complementary to other plans aimed at supporting non-profit housing developers through capital grants and low-cost financing. For climate and affordability reasons, BCH should focus on medium-density, multi-unit rental housing, mostly wood-frame construction, built to high-energy efficiency standards and using clean technologies like electric heat pumps. Most importantly, BCH could be a major contribution to the feds living up to the rhetoric of the National Housing Strategy by truly making housing a human right.

—Marc Lee, CCPA senior researcher

Neoliberalism returns unchecked

Summer 2025 has been punishing for young people seeking work. In July, youth unemployment reached its highest level since 2010 (excluding 2020 and 2021), students and new graduates taking the worst of it. In response to growing economic uncertainty this past year, companies have been scaling back new hires and offering more part-time work. Will the government act this fall to tackle this generational crisis in the making?

There’s been radio silence on this and many other pressing issues confronting Canadians this summer, from health care and sky-high housing costs to the glaring gaps in Employment Insurance coverage and the infrastructure gap on reserve. Canadians tell pollsters that jobs and the economy rank at the top of their list of concerns—yet the policy prescriptions on offer remain narrowly focused on the resource and manufacturing sectors and military procurement.

The billions of dollars in tax cuts that the government delivered immediately after the election will deliver little to young people and other low-income households, while undercutting the ability of the government to meet the challenges of this moment. Indeed, the federal government looks set to revive the deep cuts of the 1990s—cuts that gutted public services, widened inequality and left lasting damage still felt today.

In Prime Minister Carney’s hunt for defence dollars, he appears to be doubling down on the neoliberal playbook, planning to narrow the remit of government, gambling that the private sector will deliver high-quality services, despite all evidence to the contrary. Already, we are seeing the government lay off public servants while billions in support of community programs, research and education, and economic development are on the chopping block.

What Canada needs now is not a weaker government but a stronger one, with the resources and resolve to act in our collective interest—and to leave no one behind.

—Katherine Scott, CCPA senior researcher