The federal government's 2025 budget was tabled Tuesday and it includes almost 90-billion dollars in net new spending items over five years.
The spending is focused on boosting productivity and building infrastructure to help Canadian businesses expand beyond the U.S. market.
The budget also projects a more than 78-billion-dollar total deficit, steadily decreasing to more than 56-billion within five years.
Speaking on AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides, Lydia Miljan, political science professor at the University of Windsor, said the budget contains some incentives, such as tax breaks, to help attract business investments.
"That's been our big problem in Canada, is that we don't invest in our own work force, and our own businesses. We do have this major productivity gap, so to the extent to which that that would be the investments, I think that's a good starting point," Miljan said.
Miljan said she hopes this plan works because the return on investment would have a great outcome.
"If they're building new infrastructure projects, and we're getting our kids back to work then we're not paying out on E.I., we're not paying out on income supports, but it's whether or not businesses will take those incentives and do something with it," she said.
The federal budget aims to eliminate up to 40-thousand federal public service jobs over the next three years.
Miljan said this will be done through measures such as early retirements.
"And certainly that's the nature of sort of the A.I. revolution of how they try to get some of those office jobs converted with A.I. solutions, summaries, and things like that, but then the question is does that mean it's going to take even longer to get a passport," Miljan said.
Senator Sandra Pupatello also joined Patty Handysides on Tuesday and said she was glad the budget reflected the challenges facing Windsor-Essex.
"From a business perspective the enhancements on tax incentives for investment, the support for workers, those things that got cemented in this budget. It is a budget when we're facing a crisis, which we know we are, and Windsor is the epicentre of it," Pupatello said.
The Liberals are earmarking $115 billion over five years, including a dedicated "Build Communities Strong Fund", which Pupatello said will support a range of local infrastructure projects.
"For us that means we're going to keep our building trades working, the whole internal economy, the focus on buying local, buying Canadian, that's gonna help us, that is going to make up for some of the trouble we're having with our biggest trading partner," she said.
Pupatello said the budget has measures to help workers.
"They know our workers are in stress right now. Are they going to be on E.I., are they going to have to retrain, so you can see lots of investment being put in that area, as well the funds that our companies need to sort of stave off this, being on the brink, because they're getting help with tariffs right now. Those funds, you can see them clearly in the budget, and we're really pleased to see that," Pupatello said.
The federal budget is a key matter of confidence for any government.
Nova Scotia MP Chris d’Entremont crossed the floor Tuesday night, defecting from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s official opposition caucus to join Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals.
Carney’s Liberals were just three votes shy of a majority government, and now are one seat closer, also bettering the odds of seeing this budget pass.
-With files from CTV News and The Canadian Press