Originally published in the Toronto Sun on November 20, 2020

Deficits seem to be a particularly infectious aspect of the global COVID-19 pandemic and Canada is especially hard hit with the highest proportional borrowing in the world. But deficit spending is not a pandemic symptom; it’s a chronic illness that’s infected all political parties. And worse yet, it threatens to harm generations to come.

The federal government was already on track to run 17 consecutive deficits by 2025, resulting in a string of deficits second only to the 27-year streak from 1970 to 1997, according to a Fraser Institute report released in 2019. From 2010 to the end of 2019, both Conservative and Liberal governments added over $128 billion to the federal debt, representing a 23 per cent increase. By the time the pandemic emergency spending was announced in March this year, the federal government was already $756 billion in debt.

Additionally, the federal government’s program spending also reached record-setting highs in the years before the pandemic. From 2018 to 2020, the Trudeau government recorded  the highest levels of per-person federal program spending outside of a major recession or crisis. In its 2019 budget projections, the government had projected to spend up to $9,306 per-person in 2020. Adding in the additional pandemic spending, that figure is projected to rise as high as $13,226 for each and every Canadian. 

Even without the record-setting deficit of (at least) $343 billion this year, the federal government was already facing a long rehabilitation back to balanced budgets. In its 2019 report, the Parliamentary Budget Office projected that Canadians wouldn’t see a balanced budget until 2040. While there was certainly a speedier path to balance before the pandemic, a federal debt of more than a trillion dollars by March 2021 could put us on track to easily break that longstanding 27-year streak of consecutive deficit spending.

Provincial politicians haven’t done so well either, contributing a total of $229 billion in new debt from 2010 to 2019. The problem was especially obvious in Western provinces where governments spent booming oil revenues as quickly as they came in and saw borrowing soar when oil prices dropped. Alberta leads the pack with a 1,102 per cent increase in spending, adding over $57 billion dollars to its provincial debt, followed by Saskatchewan with a 213 per cent increase that added $8 billion to its provincial debt.  

This pandemic has served as an eye-opener for Canadians by exposing governments as being woefully unprepared for a legitimate disaster due to its chronic overspending problem.  In nine years, governments across the country added more than $357 billion in new debt. Politicians, especially those in Ottawa, failed to accomplish what many families wisely do for their own households: save for a rainy day.

Instead of saving during the good days, politicians spent every dollar that came in, and, when that wasn’t enough, borrowed as if the rainy days were never going to come. 

With no plan to deal with the pandemic debt, the current government in Ottawa has resorted to assuring anyone who would listen that “the government took on debt so that Canadians wouldn’t have to,” a statement that is as self-serving as it is misleading.

The simple truth is that our governments have a chronic spending problem and have been piling up debt long before the pandemic ever arrived. Politicians will continue to borrow and spend because they can always pass the debt burden down the line. Despite claims that governments will bear the brunt of its spendthrift ways, it will be the next and future generations who will eventually pay for our debt and not politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

There’s no time to wait and recover for the next crisis, because frankly, we can’t afford to face another one. It’s time Canadians come together for an intervention and demand a real plan from politicians to get our finances back in order.  

Kris Rondolo is the Executive Director of Generation Screwed, the youth advocacy initiative from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.