Liberal cabinet meets amid gloomy economic new to lay out plans for 2016 – CP

Source: The Canadian Press
Jan 18, 2016

SAINT ANDREWS, N.B. _ The first cabinet meeting of 2016 is expected to focus today on what’s happened to Canada’s economy and where it is heading in the coming year.

The three-day retreat in New Brunswick will help set the overarching goals for 2016 and lay the strategy the Liberals will use to deal with issues facing the country, including a sluggish economy.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau is expected to give his cabinet colleagues an update on what he’s been hearing in budget consultations, what finance officials have forecasted for 2016 and what it could all mean for the federal budget.

The Liberals are expected to deliver their first budget in mid- to late-March.

House leader Dominic Leblanc, the senior Liberal from New Brunswick, said Sunday the budget will honour the party’s campaign commitments _ notwithstanding the economic news, which has been “a longstanding concern of the government.”

Cabinet ministers will have a full day of meetings today before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a handful of minister travel overseas to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum.

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