Destruction Debt of
Every second, every minute, every hour, Canada’s debt level continues to rise.
How did we get into this predicament — and is there any way out?
by Rosalind Stefanac illustration by Blair Kelly
AST SUMMER, people all over Canada got a sobering look at our rising national debt — in real time. Launched by the Canadian Tax- payers Federation (CTF), a five-ft.-by-12-ft. digital “debt clock” mounted on a custom-
ized trailer toured through nine provinces over six weeks to show folks per-second updates of the nation’s massive outstanding dues. “When they saw how large the number was and that
it was going up by almost $1,000 every second, people were really shocked,” says CTF’s federal director Aaron Wudrick, who was tasked with driving the trailer across the country. It’s an effective gimmick the advocacy group started 24 years ago to raise public awareness after seeing a similar debt clock in New York City’s Times Square. CTF retired the clock when the Liberals balanced the budget in 1997, but felt compelled to re-
vive it in 2011 because the Harper government had been running deficits. “The interest alone on federal debt in 2015 was $26 billion — more than Canada paid for its entire Armed Forces,” says Wudrick. “It doesn’t matter where you sit on the political spectrum — that is $26 billion we couldn’t use for other things, such as healthcare programs or transit.” The debt picture gets even bleaker when we factor in
provincial dues. According to the latest research from the Fraser Institute, Canada’s public policy think-tank, combined federal and provincial net debt increased to $1.3 trillion in 2015-’16 from $834 billion in 2007-’08. That works out to $35,827 of debt for every adult and child in Canada. Also, 9% of our federal tax dollars are lost to paying mere interest on debt. Worse still, among the provinces, Ontario is one of the largest subsover- eign borrowers in the world, owing more than $300
44 | CPA MAGAZINE | MARCH 2017
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