Quote:
Originally Posted by Changing City
That's 46 billion dollars a year that the government are paying back. They spent a lot of money in 2020 and 2021 because there was a world-wide pandemic and an economic melt down. Canada didn't have unique immunity, and it responded like pretty much every other country. "Debt increases are particularly striking in advanced economies, where public debt rose from around 70 percent of GDP, in 2007, to 124 percent of GDP, in 2020." [ IMF]. Canada's debt to GDP ratio rose too, from 53.9% to 73.7% in one year - so not as much as many countries. It's back down to 66.3% in 2023 [CEIC].
Assuming interest rates continue to fall, and the economy doesn't significantly falter, the government debt as both a % of revenue, and as a % of GDP, should be on a downward trend over the next year. |
$46B is just the interest. The principal is much larger than this.
AFAIK the ~70% number for our debt to GDP only accounts for the federal debt and does not include provincial debt. If our provincial debt load is included that number would be roughly double. Other advanced countries tend to not have as much debt at the provincial levels so most of their debt is concentrated at the federal level, making their balance sheets appear worse than ours when in reality that is not necessarily the case.
Also looks like you missed the CEIC link, but I was able to find it.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicato...of-nominal-gdp
EDIT: I was mistaken, it does account for provincial debt as well. However our net debt includes assets held by CPP and QPP. Gross debt removes these and by that measure Canada falls to 20th out of 29 countries.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/arti...ttawa-tells-us