Don Martin loses it in today's National Post:
Clock tallies IOU to next generation: Stephen Harper will join Jean Chretien as only the second prime
minister in history to enroll Canada in the half-trillion-dollar
national debt club.
This is silly. Nominal debt figures from 1995 – when the federal debt first went above $500b – should not be directly compared to current nominal debt figures; you have to take into account inflation (a dollar in 1995 was worth more) and economic growth (our ability to pay debts has increased). Here is a graph of the federal debt, expressed as a percentage of GDP and in terms of per capita 2009 dollars:
When the nominal federal debt hit $500b in 1995, that was the equivalent of 59% of GDP. Fourteen years later, $500b works out to about to something like 39% of GDP. In order to reach debt levels that are truly comparable to 1995, the federal government would have to run $50b deficits for at least six years in a row. And no-one is forecasting that.
Yes, the federal government has a structural deficit, and something will have to be done. Panicking isn't it.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Excellent point as usual. One thing that concerns me a bit more is what the trend with Provincial debts will be. Any insight there?
On the other hand, our debt is still far higher than it was in the ’70s by any measure. I wouldn’t say we’re out of the ‘danger zone’ where we need to be fiscally cautious. I’d like to see us return to a declining debt:GDP path so we have some more fiscal room to maneuver in the late 2010s and 2020s until the boomers start dying.
Is there not even one journalist out there, that is capable of accurately reporting information, and with the proper context any more? PM Harper has little use for the media – is it any wonder? Most Canadians have little trust in the media anymore either. I think it was Trudeau, who also had little use for the media, who said it best – something like: “what they lack in competence, they more than make up for in vengence…”
Nick, maybe you should start offering some sort of workshop for the journalism students at Carleton – top 10 mistakes journalists make when writing about economics. This would be a good case study.
The National Post still has a pulse?
If I was writing an op-ed column and wanted to blow up people’s skirts for fun, I would point out that Harper was a member of the original western-based Reform Party that made fiscal conservatism a corner-stone policy in the 1980s.
I would also point out that the Progressive Conservatives started down the road of fiscal contrition but that Reform Party plank was essentially co-opted by the Chretien/Martin Liberals.