Good morning. Tomorrow brings the long-awaited first budget from Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose big campaign promises are colliding with political and economic realities that have left him conspicuously short on elbow room. More on that below, along with a look at the week ahead.

Currency: Ottawa is preparing to roll out draft stablecoin legislation as soon as December, as Canada seeks to catch up to U.S. moves that have pushed the fiat-backed digital asset into the mainstream.

Trade: The Trump administration is considering additional tariffs on Canadian imports, creating more uncertainty in a trade war that is wreaking havoc on Canada’s steel, aluminum, automobile and lumber sectors.

Telecoms: In business, unlike baseball, Rogers Communications Inc. gets to come out a winner without hosting a championship parade.

Spare a moment for the middle class.

For years, it’s been the centrepiece of Liberal budgets – from the 2016 classic Growing a Strong Middle Class to Strong Middle Class, Affordable Economy, Healthy Future in 2023. These were budgets built around a broad sense of ambition – a message that might have resonated because it tapped into how Canadians felt about cost pressures, job risk, feeling stuck.

That’s the illusion of the “middle class” – it’s as much a vibe as anything measurable. If you feel you are in this demographic, you probably are. If you’d like to be, this message is for you. It makes sense if you’re courting success as a politician, but less if you’re trying to measure it as an economist.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promises are no less lofty – nothing less than turning Canada into the strongest economy in the G7 – but the threat he faces at the beginning of his tenure is more visible: Because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, economics reporter Mark Rendell writes, Canadian industries that were built on seamless integration into continental supply chains are fighting for survival.

Exports have plunged, business investment has frozen, and the Bank of Canada warned last week that the country’s economy is going through a “structural transition” that could leave economic growth on a permanently lower path.

Where “growing the middle class” might be measured by a mood ring, Carney’s promises to build multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects, unlock stalled corporate investment, lower costs and expand a list of trading partners are far more suited to a calculator.

Tomorrow, the calculators will be charged and ready. Economists expect a deficit between $70-billion and $100-billion – roughly 2 to 3 per cent of GDP – and will be looking parsing the accounting behind it to see whether Carney’s nation-building plans add up.

“It’s really in the details,” RBC economist Nathan Janzen told me last week. ”It’s pretty clear that budget deficits are going to be larger than previously expected. The challenge is turning those projected deficits into actual projects.”

How will Canada reach its pledge to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence while expanding housing, transport and clean-energy infrastructure at the same time? Can Ottawa channel those investments into the kind of productivity gains that have eluded the economy for a generation? How deeply will Carney bring down the cost of running government – from public-service spending to program administration – as part of his campaign pledge to make “every dollar spent wisely and effectively”?

The former central banker has already signalled a break from the Trudeau years, tightening language around fiscal restraint and promising growth through investment rather than consumption. He and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who faces a big moment in more ways than one – have cast the plan as a “generational” shift intended to retool the Canadian economy for a more competitive era.

It’s one thing to say your plan does that, but quite another to prove it to a world of investors, economists and NATO allies wondering if Canada is truly ready to shoulder the economic weight of its ambition.

Tomorrow’s budget will test whether record spending can be detailed, believable and built into measurable results – what The Globe’s editorial board called the “real measure” of whether the Carney Liberals are truly different from their predecessors.

If the budget digs as big a hole as expected, in other words, it had better include a sturdy staircase back up.

Read more

• Globe Editorial: The Carney Liberals arrive at a fiscal fork in the road.
• Tony Fell: How Canada can do more, faster
• John Turley-Ewart: Is Canada a serious country? The coming budget will tell us

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