JUSTIN TRUDEAU has been Canada’s prime minister since November, but it was only on March 22nd that he showed the country in detail how he intends to lead it. His government’s first budget, presented by the finance minister, Bill Morneau, broke decisively with the austerity of the previous Conservative administration. Faced with an economy weakened by low commodity prices, Mr Trudeau and his finance minister had no hesitation in keeping the lavish promises of extra spending made by their Liberal Party during the election campaign. Federal spending is projected to rise from 13.6% of GDP in the last fiscal year to 14.6% in 2016-17. The Liberals had promised a big programme of spending on infrastructure to repair the country’s creaking transport systems and invest in green technology. Their first budget wisely does this by boosting maintenance spending on existing facilities while they ponder backing bigger projects, perhaps including oil pipelines and LNG facilities, later on. The deficit is set to rise this fiscal year to C$29.4 billion ($22.5 billion), about 1.5% of GDP, from C$5.4 billion. Mr Trudeau seems to have given up on his goal to balance the budget by 2019.

At a time when most rich-country governments are squeezing their budgets Canada’s can afford to splurge, in part because of the budget discipline practised by the Conservatives. Canada’s public debt is considerably lower than that of its peers (see chart). The government is hoping that the economy will strengthen with a looser fiscal policy enhancing the stimulus of low interest rates, rather than counteracting it as it has done since 2012.

Mr Trudeau scrapped the Conservatives’ fiscal policy in part to preserve their other achievements. He supports the Canada-EU trade agreement negotiated by his predecessor, Stephen Harper, and has signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade accord among 12 Pacific nations. The Liberals have already kept their promise to cut income tax for the middle class, and pay for that with an increase for top earners. The budget does not raise corporate-tax rates, which remain comparable with those of Canada’s competitors.

The aim seems to be to maintain Canada’s commitment to globalisation, but to give it a human face. With Donald Trump whipping up resentment across the border among Americans who feel left behind, Mr Trudeau is eager to keep anger and populism at bay. “A lot of what I worry about is that ordinary folks are going to withdraw their support for the growth economy,” said Mr Trudeau to a business audience in New York last week. The median income of the middle class has not risen in 30 years, he noted. Confidence in the economy is at its lowest point in 20 years, according to a recent poll.

With total revenues of C$300 billion, the federal government’s capacity to lift the C$2 trillion economy is limited. The budget’s impact will be modest, says Craig Alexander of the C.D. Howe Institute, a think-tank. Still, most economists support deficit spending at a time when borrowing rates are low and the economy is weak. The question is: will Mr Trudeau know when to stop?