Good morning. Ottawa’s long-promised budget lands today, pairing billions in new investment with “difficult” spending cuts – more on that below, along with baseball’s new generation of fans and B.C.’s shelved anti-tariff ad. But first:

• Dick Cheney, former U.S. vice-president and architect of Iraq War, dies at 84
• Canada’s food agency forms a team to flag risks posed by U.S. cutbacks
• China approves group tourism travel to Canada after the Carney-Xi meeting

Mark Carney and his cabinet have talked a big game about the ambitions of today’s federal budget. It’s going to “swing for the fences,” the Prime Minister told a room full of university students in Ottawa. It’s going to “put Canadians back in control,” he contended in a video posted to social media last weekend. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said yesterday that the budget would move this country “from reliance to resilience” and “uncertainty to prosperity.” Not just that: It will offer “something for every Canadian.”

Those promises have already come with a hefty price tag, as Ottawa attempts to bolster an economy repeatedly whacked by U.S. tariffs and protectionist policies. Carney pledged $1.2-billion over the summer to support the softwood lumber sector, then tacked on a $5-billion Strategic Response Fund to help other industries caught up in the trade war. He allotted $13-billion in initial capital to build affordable housing, along with a $9.3-billion boost in annual defence spending beginning this year. There will be a whopping $50-billion devoted to local infrastructure, including transportation and hospitals. Carney likes to use the phrase “generational investments” when talking about his government’s plans.

But all that investment necessitates fiscal belt-tightening, in addition to a deficit expected to land in the $70-billion to $100-billion range. The Prime Minister has tried to brace Canadians for spending cuts with repeated warnings about “difficult choices” and straight-up “sacrifices.” He told those Ottawa students that “we will have to do less of some of the things that we want to do, so we can do more of what we must do to build a bigger and better Canada.”

Still, beyond Champagne’s request that ministers reduce program spending by 15 per cent in the next three years – which shakes out to $30-billion, according to a recent analysis by Desjardins – it’s been unclear what these sacrifices would actually entail. A senior government official told The Globe that today’s budget will identify tens of billions of dollars in targeted savings, but the details released so far have seemed (to extend Carney’s baseball metaphor) pretty minor league. The government intends to retire aging military fleets and scrap its program to plant two billion trees, although the official didn’t say how much money that would save. Ottawa also rejected a salary increase for federal judges yesterday, which would have cost about $30-million a year.

It’s a fairly safe bet, then, that the budget will find some of its much-needed spending cuts through layoffs in the public service. The number of federal employees has grown by roughly 30 per cent since the Liberals formed government a decade ago, with nearly 100,000 workers added to bring the total personnel cost to $71-billion each year. That represents the largest share of Ottawa’s operating budget, and Champagne said yesterday he’ll need to “bring the size of the public service back to a more reasonable level.” Attrition alone likely won’t be enough to get the work force down to pre-pandemic levels. Union leaders warn that staff reductions could mean as many as 70,000 civil servants wind up losing their jobs.

Last week, when Champagne first hinted at the job cuts, he promised to be “very transparent with people” and said Ottawa is “going to be very compassionate in how we do it as well.” We’ll see, once the budget is tabled this afternoon, whether those tens of thousands of federal workers agree.

Kids are made of tougher stuff than I am: Despite the Jays’ gut-punching World Series loss, they haven’t sworn off baseball for good. In fact, there’s been a surge of interest in the sport from a brand-new generation.

At home: The B.C. government has scrapped its plans for an anti-tariff ad targeted at U.S. homeowners after Ontario’s TV spot triggered a backlash from Donald Trump.

Abroad: New Yorkers head to the polls to elect their next mayor today, with Democrat Zohran Mamdani holding onto a commanding lead.

On the clock: Alberta’s Auditor-General is racing to finish his probe of political interference in the health care system, after t