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FIRST READING: The eyewatering scale of Carney's proposed debt splurge

7 0
23.04.2025

It would be one of the largest one-term, non-emergency debt accumulations in history

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With the release of the Liberals’ costed platform, the party is not just prescribing a huge increase to the deficits already planned under Justin Trudeau, it’s prescribing a peacetime debt splurge like few seen in Canadian history.

Over the next four years, the Liberal platform proposes to rack up $224.8 billion in new debt; an average of $56.9 billion per year.

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Or, an average of $4 in new debt per day, per Canadian, for four consecutive years. It’s also roughly $100 billion higher than what had been previously tallied in forecasts set out by the prior Trudeau government.

Even when adjusting for inflation, that’s a rate of structural peacetime debt accumulation that’s really only been matched by two prior Canadian prime ministers: Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney.

And in that case, the sustained 1980s Trudeau/Mulroney spending spree would directly precipitate Canada’s 1990s sovereign debt........

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