Between the early 1970s and the mid-1990s, the federal government ran a deficit every year.
federal government debt
Such implicit or explicit assumptions invariably lead to unintended consequences.
A large government debt burden can negatively affect economic growth.
According to forecasts, Canadian economic growth for 2020 will shrink by more than 12 per cent.
The federal debt going into this recession would have been $617.9 billion rather than the expected $713.2 billion.
The Trudeau government has run five consecutive deficits since taking office in 2015 and is expected to have accumulated approximately $84.3 billion in federal debt—$713.2 billion total—by the end of 2019-20.
Default risk and exchange-rate risk increase for foreign lenders as they increase their holdings of any government’s debt.
Newfoundland and Labrador has the highest per-person total government debt among the provinces at $48,478.
Ottawa is expected to spend $24.4 billion on federal government debt interest costs in 2019/20.