News Analysis Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland classified her budget as “modern supply-side economics,” but its greater reliance on government spending represents a new twist on the concept, some experts say. In her April 7 budget speech, Freeland said that “housing and immigration and skills and child care” are not only social policies, but “just as importantly, they are economic policies, too.” “Our strategy is what Janet Yellen, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, has recently dubbed ‘modern supply-side economics.’ Modern supply-side economics borrows the supply-sider’s key insight—that increasing supply is fundamental to growth—but takes a progressive, people-centred approach,” she said. Steve Ambler, economics professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, likens that to “a kind of newspeak that redefines spending as ‘supply-side policies’” and says it’s a departure from the concept’s basic tenets. “Traditional supply-side policies involve encouraging private production by reducing red tape and by keeping public …