Good morning. Once you read the fine print, the federal budget’s housing plan is far from a generational investment – more on that below, along with the U.S. military buildup near Venezuela and a flood of A.I.-written resumes. But first:

• Mark Carney plans to add mining and energy projects to his government’s major projects list, sources say
• The U.S. House returns to Washington for a vote to end the longest shutdown in history
• U of T hires three top U.S. scholars and plans for 100 new postdocs

The Globe’s verdict on Mark Carney’s budget was unanimous last week: not exactly the “generational investment” the Prime Minister had hyped. Shannon Proudfoot summed up the federal spending plan as “a manifesto of ‘no’ rather than ‘yes.’” Campbell Clark observed that once Ottawa translated its “expansive adjectives into black-and-white budget numbers, the results seemed comparatively ... modest.” Andrew Coyne took to quoting Peggy Lee: “Is that all there is?”

One problem, our columnists agreed, is that plenty of the budget’s loftiest measures had already been announced. A massive hike in defence spending? Yeah, we knew all about the massive hike in defence spending. A suite of tax breaks trumpeted as the “productivity super-deduction”? Sure, but the vast majority of those business incentives date back at least a year.

Then there’s the splashy agency Build Canada Homes, launched in September to make good on the Liberals’ election pledge to turbocharge home-building and home-buying. Again, not a brand-new project, but something else struck many budget-watchers: Carney’s campaign ambitions to “catalyze” (ugh) “a new housing industry” had been notably watered down. Let’s take a look at the party’s big promises on housing affordability and the federal budget’s shortfalls.

The promise: Build Canada Homes will spend $11.8-billion over the government’s first four years in power.

The fine print: The budget dials back that funding by almost 50 per cent, doling out slightly more than $6-billion in new money for the agency. “The fiscal commitment is pretty weak,” Marc Lee, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told my colleague Salmaan Farooqui. That might help explain a conspicuous absence in the 493-page budget – there’s no mention of the Liberals’ campaign vow to build nearly 500,000 homes a year. Instead, it just cites an estimate from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation that the country needs at least 430,000 homes annually to close the housing supply gap.

The promise: The government will reintroduce a 1970s-era tax incentive on multi-unit residential buildings, or MURBs.

The fine print: It will not. MURBs are missing altogether from the budget, which is too bad, given that the tax program “spurred tens of thousands of rental housing across the country.” (I’m quoting from the Liberals’ election platform.) That actually understates the rate of construction: The incentive has been credited with financing 122,000 units between 1974 and 1981, which worked out to a 35-per-cent increase in rental supply. You can find all sorts of those apartment towers around Toronto, which has more MURBs than any city in North America other than New York.

The promise: The government will drop the GST for first-time buyers on homes worth up to $1-million.

The fine print: This pledge did make it into the budget, and Ottawa estimates 40,000 Canadians will take advantage of the rebate every year. The Parliamentary Budget Office isn’t convinced; earlier this year, its analysis put that number a little above 10,000 buyers. And the CCPA’s Marc Lee wonders if the GST cut will truly lower the cost of a house – or if developers will simply jack their prices and eat into any tax savings for buyers.

The promise: The government will spend $1.5-billion to halve the development charges on new housing projects.

The fine print: Not quite. I’ve written before about these hidden fees, ostensibly paid by builders to fund local infrastructure, but pretty much always passed on to buyers instead. They’ve gone up 700 per cent in the last 25 years, according to the Canadian Home Builders’ Association, and play a huge part in making housing unaffordable.

The federal budget does commit to tackling development charges, but its language is vague: They’ll be cut “substantially,” rather than in half, and at a reduced price tag of $1.2-billion annually. Still, every little bit helps. If I were to buy a new place right now in Vancouver – where, I have on good authority, it did not actively snow this week – a full $119,000 of the average home cost would be chalked up to these fees. Were I to stay put in Toronto, I’d be shelling out $138,000.

At 103 years old, Elmer Friesen is one of a rapidly shrinking number of Canadians who served in the Second World War. Read more about the efforts to preserve their presence on Remembrance Day.