Open Letter to the Minister of Finance
A Canadian Community Alternative Federal Budget
Dear Minister of Finance,
We are writing in response to Canada’s 2026 federal budget — not to relitigate its details, but to respond to the feeling it left many of us with: that our public finances are constrained less by resources than by imagination.
In the weeks following the budget’s release, a group of residents, workers, artists, caregivers, and organizers came together through a community-led speculative budgeting process convened by The Climateverse and Kind Your Own Business. Rather than asking what is politically easy, participants were invited to ask a different question:
If federal public spending truly reflected our shared values, what would it fund?
Participants were each given a fixed amount of speculative public funds and asked to allocate them across areas within federal jurisdiction. Together, we translated values — climate care, Indigenous sovereignty, food security, cultural vitality, collective safety, and democratic participation — into concrete programs and priorities. The result is the attached community-authored speculative federal budget.
This document is not a proposal for immediate adoption, nor a rejection of fiscal responsibility. It is an act of democratic imagination. It shows how everyday people understand the role of the federal government in a time of climate disruption, rising inequality, and eroding public trust. It reflects a desire to invest upstream — in prevention, care, and resilience — rather than continually paying the price of crisis.
Several themes emerged clearly. Participants treated climate adaptation, food systems, housing, and culture not as discretionary spending, but as essential public infrastructure. Indigenous sovereignty was understood as foundational, not peripheral. Defense was reframed through preparedness, peacebuilding, and emergency response. And again and again, participants emphasized that budgets are not only technical documents — they are moral ones.
Budgets tell stories. They tell us whose lives are valued, what futures are considered possible, and which risks we are willing to take on behalf of those who come after us. In that sense, this speculative budget is an invitation: to consider how imagination, foresight, and participatory approaches might strengthen public decision-making in an era defined by uncertainty.
We offer this document in a spirit of civic care and shared responsibility. We would welcome the opportunity to share our process, our findings, and the questions this work raises about how Canadians want to participate in shaping our collective future.
With respect,
Alicia Richins
Founder, The Climateverse
This speculative budget was developed through facilitated participatory workshops using a fixed allocation framework and a federal jurisdiction lens. It reflects participant priorities translated into federally plausible programs.
Thank you so much for every participant who shaped this output. Please do peruse and share widely in your networks. We look forward to more speculative activities with you very soon!
