Will $52.9B in new federal spending make inflation worse?

Heading into this week's federal budget, one question loomed large: would new spending fuel inflation and make it harder for the Bank of Canada to start cutting interest rates?

The budget lays out plans to spend nearly half a trillion dollars in taxpayer money. The new spending in the document is modest by comparison — $52.9 billion. But it's still new money being poured into an economy fighting to get inflation back under control.

Economists say the spending announced this week in Ottawa won't necessarily change the forecast that assumes the year-over-year rate of inflation will come down to 2.5 per cent by the end of this year, and all the way to the 2 per cent target by the end of 2025.

"But spending is spending," Desjardins chief economist Jimmy Jean told CBC News.

While spending money now on new housing will bring down shelter inflation in the years to come, he said, "in the meantime, you have to hire workers and get more materials and that can create more pressure on inflation."

The shadow cast by inflation isn't confined to how much new spending might drive price growth.

The bigger issue here is how much the budget depends on inflation working its way back to target in relatively short order.

"It all depends on continued growth," said Sahir Khan, executive vice president of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa.

That growth depends on the economy getting better. The economy getting better depends on interest rates falling this year. And that, in turn, depends on inflation steadily working its way back to the two per cent target.

Those factors aren't merely driving the economics of the budget. Khan said they're driving the politics as well.

"It all has to line up in terms of the growth. You have to have enough rate cuts ahead of the next election to make people feel better as they head to the voting booth, and that's a lot of dependency," he said.

For an example of just how fragile that chain of events can be, look no further than the re-acceleration of inflation in the United States.

The year-over-year rate of inflation there has jumped back up to 3.5 per cent. In response, American policymakers are now talking about leaving interest rates higher for longer.

"The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that is likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence," said Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank.