This week, Canadians were presented a budget that went over like a lead balloon. No one from any corner of the political spectrum has described this as anything approaching visionary, as meeting the moment, or as a plan that Canadians can see themselves supported by and reflected in. With inequality at record levels, heading into a holiday season where food bank use is soaring, and with millions of Canadians feeling stretched if not struggling to cover the basics, this budget promises them essentially nothing. What it does do is simultaneously decide to provide tax relief to folks who are in the market for a new yacht, while cutting pension benefits for disabled RCMP personnel. And they say metaphor is dead.

Despite the government bemoaning the lack of necessary tax revenue while the ultra-rich pay just over half the effective tax rate the average Canadian pays, this budget neither generates needed revenue by increasing taxes on the wealthy and mega-corporations, nor reduces the tax burden on lower-income Canadians. Instead, the federal government’s new budget is the worst of both worlds, bleeding $58 billion from federal public services in order to continue the decades-long transfer of wealth to the top one per cent, paid for by the rest of us.

If Budget 2026 possesses any audacity, it is in daring to offer more to the wealthiest among us and to big corporations already raking in record profits, while demanding ‘sacrifice’ of everyday Canadians.

Within a matter of hours, focus shifted from what was actually in the budget to opposition MPs. Will enough of them find a way to support this budget — or at least find a way not to oppose it? Because if there is anything Canadians want less than this austerity budget, it is to be plunged into an exhausting, uninspiring winter election with the same players and the same options in front of us.

It is in this national context that so many of us watched the New York City mayoral election come to a close that same night. In an election with the highest voter turnout since 1969, a New York State Assemblyman with a name most New Yorkers hadn’t even heard a year ago brought together a multi-ethnic, multi-faith, cross-generational coalition of working people and won on a clear platform of making life more affordable for everyone. 

He did this in spite of an enormous financial disadvantage, as a wide and cross-partisan array of billionaires and big money — including MAGA hedge funder Bill Ackman, billion dollar app Door Dash, billionaire Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, and billionaire three-term New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to name a few — spent millions of dollars in a last-ditch effort to beat him.

In his victory speech, Zohran Mamdani spoke to the same paralyzing status quo we are facing here, citing fear “that we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us simply to more of the same.”

Indeed here at home, it seems the only visions on offer are various combinations of the same policies and predilections that got us here. More cuts and constrictions on public services that we know help everyday people build prosperity. More tax giveaways for big corporations and ultra-wealthy people, on the hope that maybe this time they will lead to more investment, when a decade of evidence shows they have not. More of Canadians being extorted by corporations as we trade concessions for jobs, and then watch those jobs vanish anyway. More small ball, supposedly common sense measures to address overwhelming crises — and then, eventually the rolling back of those very same measures because they weren’t ambitious enough to earn any supporters.

You can have your austerity fast or you can have it slow. You can have it in a strident adversarial package, in a package with dulcet tones and great hair, or in a knee-jerk nationalism that flickers like a mirage when you get too close. But what you can’t have — what is not on offer — is a vision that puts real, lasting, material changes to the lives of everyday people at the centre.

But in New York City, the beating heart of global capitalism, Mamdani broke through and won big by offering something different. In his own words, he presented New Yorkers with “a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt” and centred that vision on “the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that this city has seen since the days of Fiorello La Guardia: an agenda that will freeze the rents for more than two million rent-stabilized tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal child care across our city.”

This week, Canadians saw two ways forward. Two visions for what the future could be. The first vision is clear and present. We’ve not just seen this movie before. We’re living it. For over four decades, we have tried austerity and strangling public services. We’ve tried neoliberal economies built around corporate tax cuts, domestic monopolies, and the slow surrender of our sovereignty to American multinationals. It ends with stagnating wages, soaring cost of living, skyrocketing inequality, and crumbling public services. It ends with a country so sick of their options they’d rather ignore a budget that offers no help in a cost-of-living crisis than face another election.

It’s time for a different vision that actually addresses the most pressing needs of working people and begins to put them at the centre of their own economy. While many of these policies are already being applied successfully somewhere in the world, some may not be as successful as we hope. But it is clear that more than anything, what people want from their government is to at least get caught trying.

For an example of that new way forward, just look at New York. After all, if it can make it there, it can make it anywhere. 

Jared A. Walker is the Executive Director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy group fighting for fair, progressive taxation. He is also the Vice Chair of the Broadbent Institute Board of Directors.