In the news today: PBO’s fiscal update, factors fuelling inflation, student job cuts

Budget officer Jason Jacques made waves at a parliamentary committee last week when he told MPs he wasn’t sure if the federal government still has fiscal anchors.

Prime Minister Mark Carney says the government does still have metrics in place to guide public finance decisions and ensure they are on a sustainable track.

What’s fuelling inflation right now?

MPs returned to the House of Commons earlier this month to confront an old problem — inflation — which is now being driven by new forces.

Many consumers are still reeling from the decades-high inflation levels seen in the post-pandemic recovery period, when prices for housing, fuel and groceries all surged.

But the factors shaping inflation today are different from the ones in play when the lockdowns ended, and MPs and the Bank of Canada are now grappling with the impact of tariffs, taxes and government spending on the cost of living.

Statistics Canada says the annual rate of inflation came in at 1.9 per cent in August, up from 1.7 per cent in July.

Almost 2,000 student jobs cut from government

The number of students working for the federal government fell almost 20 per cent between 2024 and 2025.

Data provided by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat shows 9,120 students were employed in the federal public service at the end of March 2024. A year later, in March 2025, that number had fallen to 7,370.

Employees on leave without pay, ministers’ exempt staff, employees locally engaged outside of Canada, some RCMP and Canadian Forces members and some agencies were excluded from the data.

The biggest cut in student employment was at Canada Revenue Agency, which saw its student workforce drop from 1,356 in March 2024 to 268 in March 2025.

Emission disclosure shows uneven progress: report

A new report shows Canadian companies are slowly improving their reporting on carbon emissions and other key climate change data, but that progress remains uneven, and needed emissions reductions aren’t happening.

The study from the Institute for Sustainable Finance at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business found that 79 per cent of firms on the S&P TSX Composite Index reported emissions from their own operations in 2023, up from 72 per cent in 2021.

But looking at the data on a market capitalization basis shows a decline to 88 per cent from 91 per cent over the same period because several energy producers removed sustainability disclosures after the federal government passed anti-greenwashing rules last year.

Police investigate threats over B.C. ostrich cull

Mounties in British Columbia say they are investigating “escalating threats of violence” directed at businesses linked or thought to be associated with a cull of some 400 ostriches, which have been spared for now.

RCMP say businesses across the province have been “flooded” with calls and emails with “language intended to intimidate” should they continue participating in the cull ordered by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in response to an outbreak of avian influenza first detected at Universal Ostrich Farms last December.

The birds were spared, at least temporarily, by an interim stay granted by the Supreme Court of Canada on Wednesday as it considers an application by the farm for leave to appeal a lower court decision that allowed the cull to proceed.

The CFIA says it will comply with the stay and file a response with the court, while it maintains control of the ostrich enclosure at the farm in southeastern B.C.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 25, 2025

The Canadian Press

by The Canadian Press

In the news today: PBO’s fiscal update, factors fuelling inflation, student job cuts

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