{"id":37175,"date":"2025-11-13T14:21:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37175"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:21:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:21:57","slug":"mps-receive-federal-budget-feedback-at-local-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/mps-receive-federal-budget-feedback-at-local-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"MPs receive Federal Budget feedback at local conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora\u2019s Members of Parliament \u2013 Sandra Cobena and Costas Menegakis \u2013 got feedback from residents on the 2025 Federal Budget at a forum hosted at the Aurora Cultural Centre on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The forum was convened just days after the Federal Government presented its long-awaited financial blueprint in the House of Commons, one which was touted as an investment in the future and one that address uncertainties resulting from ongoing trade disputes with the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Budget, said Prime Minister Mark Carney, confronts the challenges of global trade \u201chead on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBudget 2025 is about building Canada strong: investing in our people, our ideas, and our industries,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019re ushering in a new economic strategy to supercharge growth and give businesses the confidence to invest. We will enable $1 trillion in total investments in five years \u2013 to give ourselves more than any country could ever take away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The budget includes $280 billion in capital investments over the next five years, which the Government says will \u201cmobilize more than $1 trillion in total investment from public, private, and institutional partners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs these investments are realized, they will drive creation, faster growth, and stronger revenues to sustain social programs that help Canadians get ahead,\u201d said the Federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cobena, Newmarket-Aurora\u2019s Conservative MP, however, says Canada\u2019s deficit and debt remain top of mind given what was presented last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted to go out into the community to bring the budget and also just be available for questions because, of course, this budget comes a year-and-a-half after the last one was tabled and there has been so much anticipation,\u201d she says. \u201cHaving the financial background, this is right up my alley, so I was very excited to just have a roundtable and just have a discussion on finance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy concern, of course, is the deficit and the debt. Those two numbers are big. We know now that the deficit is roughly $78.3 billion, if all the assumptions come to be. But we know already that is not going to be the case. The Prime Minister is looking to buy submarines that are expected to cost about $100 billion for the lives of the submarines and that was not included in the budget. When we look at the deficit and the debt specifically, the numbers are astronomical. The debt is $1.3 trillion. The number is so big. This budget adds $324 billion of debt and that is particularly concerning because it is essentially handing every Canadian family a $20,000 credit card and saying, \u2018Good luck, you pay for it.\u2019 That has direct implications for our youth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Youth, she says, are \u201cparticularly impacted\u201d right now when it comes to affordability, housing, and job opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a point that was highlighted Saturday by one attendee who said his daughter spent all summer trying to pin down a job, but without any luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew there was a lot of things going through his mind because I could see it in his eyes. When we opened it up for a question-and-answer, he stood up and was very, very upset,\u201d she recalls. \u201cHe said, \u2018I honestly just feel with this budget not presenting a clear path, a clear solution for them, I just want to tell my kids to go to another country. I\u2019m just so frustrated.\u2019 [In the last election] there were a lot of people who were on the fence in terms of who to support. They trusted that the Prime Minister and his experience would lead to a budget that was more fiscally responsible, but with actual opportunities for today to address the crisis that we have today \u2013 not so abstract and so long-term and hinging on a number of assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she heads back to Ottawa next week, Cobena says she will continue to advocate on budget clarity and for residents and businesses alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBig businesses are important, but when we talk about the economy, it\u2019s that mid-market, it\u2019s small and medium-sized enterprises that create the jobs that create the wealth, and they are not being exempt from the rules, clearly,\u201d she says, referencing some rule exemptions for big projects. \u201cThere\u2019s not a real plan for them. With those businesses, they\u2019re not cash rich enough to be able to lobby the government, hire expensive lobbyists, expensive accountants to help them find loopholes in taxes so they can reduce their expenses\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are the ones that are being disproportionately impacted\u2026. They\u2019re still struggling, they\u2019re still having to deal with mountains of regulation; some regulation is necessary, but the problem is you\u2019ve got a government that just has a new idea, a new regulation, another one, another one, and that\u2019s why we see the delays that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora\u2019s Members of Parliament \u2013 Sandra Cobena and Costas Menegakis \u2013 got feedback from residents on the 2025 Federal Budget at a forum hosted at the Aurora Cultural Centre on Saturday morning. The forum was convened just days after the Federal Government presented its long-awaited financial blueprint in the House of Commons, one which was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/2025-11-13-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9FB","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 14:57:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37177,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37175\/revisions\/37177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}