Justin Trudeau Wanted One Reaction to His New Budget and It Was This: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alright, well. This certainly is a budget, yes. It is a big book from the government detailing how it wants to spend your money.

It probably could have been worse. Better, too, but also worse. Contrary to some of the doomsday predictions from the Canadian business community in the runup to "Building the Middle Class," there were no major tax hikes on capital gains or anything else that might rock the economic boat too much. In all likelihood, this is because everyone is waiting to see what happens in the United States. If Donald Trump decides to slash taxes across the board at the same time Canada decided to raise them, the argument goes, it might hurt this country's bid to draw in all the business brainpower alienated by the rise of neo-fascism. So, hey: chalk one up to Finance Minister Bill Morneau's new-found fiscal caution.

There also isn't too much new spending—likely because they didn't really raise any taxes. Instead, the Trudeau government's sophomore budget opted to re-announce old money from last year, spread it around even thinner, and kick its implementation further down the road—either right before or after the 2019 election, naturally. Which, for a budget focused on "innovation," is a pretty old technique.

But there are a few highlights in the budget for the under-35 set. They're raising the income threshold for student loans or grants, meaning students working part-time will be more likely to qualify for funding. Similarly, the Liberals are setting aside $132 million over four years to ensure that unemployed Canadians can go back to school and continue collecting EI benefits. They will also spend $5 billion over the next 11 years on affordable housing, which is good news for anyone planning to live, work, or attend school in a major urban centre at any point in the 2020s.

Read More: How the Budget Will Affect You as a Millennial

True to its emphasis on innovating synergistic growth in the digital cyber buzzword economy of tomorrow, the budget also announced $950 million over five years to spur innovation by funding innovators and creating "innovation superclusters," which I guess has something to do with subsidizing Macbooks in the GTA. They're also setting aside $50 million for new curricula that will teach students in the provincially-administered K-12 education system how to code. And they're pumping $395.5 million into the Youth Employment Strategy.

So fear not, young Canadians: the federal government is very anxious for you to get a job involving computers. But presumably they also want you to work from home—they've axed the public transit tax credit (although it was a pretty lousy policy tool), and they're slapping GST/HST charges on ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. And your booze and smokes will be more expensive too, so, have fun handing some of that sweet federal cash back to Uncle Ottawa the next time you're on the go downtown. Also, the opioid antidote naloxone is once again tax-free in Canada, so, stay safe out there.

Budget 2017 was touted as being the first budget to include a gender-based analysis, designed to flex some fiscal muscle in ways that will specifically help more women. The delivery was a bit of a mixed bag. They're allocating $100 million over five years on a National Strategy to Address Violence Against Women, they're setting aside $40 million for women-led technology firms, and they're spending $7 billion over ten years on making childcare more accessible. But, as Kate McInturff points out, there are few specific plans on how to address the wage gap, the employment gap, or the disproportionate rates of violence experienced by women, and Status of Women Canada remains woefully underfunded. They've also included the option to extend parental leave from 12 to 18 months, but haven't set aside any extra funding for it, so if you plan to take advantage, stretch that money out over another six months at your peril.

Read More: Seven Things You Might Have Missed in the Budget

Its treatment of climate change is a mixed bag too. There are a few admirable initiatives, and Trudeau appears to be on track to fulfill his campaign promise to phase out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. But it doesn't seem to have a plan for dealing with "orphan wells," which are abandoned drill sites that the industry has argued could be cleaned up by displaced resource workers or converted into geothermal heating sites for greenhouses. (A recurring theme in this budget seems to be that skill development and transitional support programs are only for tech geeks, not roughnecks.)

Similarly, the feds have promised to set aside $2 billion for a Climate Disaster Mitigation Fund to "support national, provincial and municipal infrastructure required to deal with the effects of a changing climate." This, like most other lines in this budget, is vague to the point of being totally meaningless. But credit where credit is due: the funding set out here in the budget is a step in the right direction, which is especially valuable at a time when forces at home and abroad are pushing to overturn political and economic action on climate change.

As is usually the case with these things, what they leave out is more interesting than what they put in. For instance: last year, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) set universal internet access for all citizens as an infrastructure priority—access which is particularly lacking in rural and northern communities. But in this year's budget, there was nothing set aside for this initiative except a promise to "coordinate targets [with the CRTC] and establish effective ways to meet them," which is a fancy way of saying they don't see wiring the North as high on the priority list.

Likewise, the federal government has pledged $3.4 billion for education, healthcare, and infrastructure funding for Indigenous peoples, but that figure doesn't tell the full story. One of Trudeau's pledges in 2015 was a vow to eliminate all boil-water advisories on reserves by 2020. But there is no new money to address the problem, despite the fact that VICE has previously reported that under its current funding scheme, the Trudeau government is very unlikely to meet that target.

There is also no new money for the First Nations Child and Family Services Program. Budget 2016 set aside $634 million over five years for Indigenous children and families in need, but so far that money has been slow to appear. A Canadian Human Rights Tribunal last year ruled that the government discriminates against First Nations children in care compared to the standard level of care for children under provincial jurisdictions. But the government has so far failed to adhere to the ruling, and today's budget didn't mention the program at all.

Overall, Budget 2017 mostly just re-announces plans from Budget 2016, and most of its new money is kicked down the road for another term or two in office—what a wonderful reason to vote Liberal in the next election! There is some promise in the new things that it actually does announce, but a lot of it is stretched so thin that it's hard to grasp onto anything solid. For a prime minister that campaigned and won on an image of dynamic idealism, this is a pretty unambitious, unimaginative, and cynical document. It reveals a Liberal government that seems out of ideas after only a year in government and is more than confident that it won't face a real electoral threat from either the Tories or the NDP. It's just spinning its wheels until 2019, when the money will show up to remind you where to mark your X.

Yep. This sure is a budget.

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