{"id":703177,"date":"2026-05-30T06:08:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/703177\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T06:08:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T06:08:22","slug":"jack-mintz-rising-government-debt-will-hit-canada-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/703177\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Mintz: Rising government debt will hit Canada, too"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A potential sovereign debt crisis looms as governments continue to ramp up their spending and deficits. In 2024, the latest year for which data are available, global gross public debt<\/a> hit 95 per cent of world GDP, 32 points higher than in 2001. The G7 countries, which make up 30 per cent of the world\u2019s economy, are even worse, with gross public debt now at 124 per cent of GDP. And defence needs, demographic pressures and a desire to support the vulnerable will likely lead to even more debt.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that 10-year treasury bond interest rates have returned to levels not seen since just before the 2008 financial crisis. The U.S. 10-year rate averaged 4.52 per cent<\/a> in May, more than double its May 2019 average of 2.4 per cent. Borrowing charges are taking up a larger share of taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n

Canada is by no means immune from excessive borrowing. Our general government gross debt has reached 111 per cent of GDP, up from 67 per cent in 2001. We are fourth highest in the G7 and seventh highest amongst advanced economies \u2014 though at least we are less leveraged than the United States, where general government debt is 126 per cent of GDP.<\/p>\n

The Fraser Institute<\/a> estimates that federal and provincial net debt (i.e., gross debt minus financial assets) totals almost $2.5 trillion, equal to three quarters of our GDP. Wisely, and unlike the federal budget, the Institute does not subtract almost a trillion dollars in CPP and QPP net assets to get to net debt. Those assets are spoken for. They have to fund our future pension liabilities, which the feds simply ignore in measuring net debt. In a crisis, net debt is meaningless anyway: the market value of financial assets plummets as interest rates rise. For this reason and because tangible government assets like roads and buildings are illiquid and therefore hard to dispose of, rating agencies focus on government gross debt in assessing stress risk.<\/p>\n

But these calculations omit hidden debt-drivers that we ignore at our peril.<\/p>\n

Weakening productivity: Growth in GDP per hour worked has dropped steadily among OECD<\/a> countries, from annual growth of 2.4 per cent in 2000-2007 to 0.8 per cent in 2021-2023. With weaker growth, taxes don\u2019t rise as quickly, producing higher deficits when government spending continues to grow. Since 2016<\/a> Canada\u2019s general government expenditure has risen by 3.4 percentage points of GDP, reaching 44.2 per cent in 2025.\u00a0 Over the same period, revenues grew only 2.1 percentage points, to 42.4 per cent. With per capita income almost flat, the increase in revenue was solely from tax hikes and population growth. Overall, Canada\u2019s general government deficit rose 1.3 percentage points of GDP.<\/p>\n

Public-sector spending is humongous \u2014 equal to two-fifths of Canada\u2019s economy and hurting productivity since taxes discourage work and investment. Canada is also the 10th highest spender on social services<\/a> among OECD countries (at 24.9 per cent of GDP). Social services do help vulnerable people but government transfers reduce<\/a> the incentive to work or save.<\/p>\n

Military needs: Because of rising international tensions, countries are ramping up military spending. That will bring higher deficits \u2014 unless taxes are raised or other spending, including social services, curtailed. Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged this week that Canada will increase military spending to four per cent of GDP by 2030 and five per cent by 2035. If other spending and tax policies remain unchanged, Canada\u2019s indebtedness could in five years exceed 120 per cent of GDP. More guns needs to mean less butter.<\/p>\n

Aging populations: The IMF forecasts rising pension and health spending due to population aging and rising real health-care costs<\/a>. It calculates that in the G7 countries, the present value of higher pension and health spending is 96 per cent of GDP.\u00a0 The present value of unfunded pension and health-care liabilities is 50 per cent of GDP in Canada and 55 per cent in the U.S. Though these higher costs could be partly offset by lower education spending as demographic changes reduce student enrolments, governments have generally been reluctant to cut education spending. In Canada, real spending per student rose<\/a> almost six per cent from 2013-14 to 2022-23.<\/p>\n

Falling tax levels: Because the elderly earn and spend less in their retirement years the rise in average age means tax levels decline as a share of GDP. The elderly also benefit from tax breaks like pension-splitting, the pension deduction and the age credit. The GST\/HST provides exemptions for food, shelter and other necessities that account for a larger share of elderly consumption compared to those who work. A 2015 study<\/a> I co-authored estimated that total taxes drop almost nine points as a share of income when people shift from work to retirement. I estimate the tax\/GDP ratio will fall almost a half point in just 10 years simply due to aging.<\/p>\n

If we think we have a sovereign debt problem now, just wait. My bet is voters will do what they always do \u2014 shift burdens to the future. Without deficit discipline, the effect this time may well be to trigger a sovereign debt crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A potential sovereign debt crisis looms as governments continue to ramp up their spending and deficits. In 2024,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,195569,46,255829,893,255833,62496,255830,255832,36794,104312,255831],"class_list":["post-703177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-deficits","tag-economy","tag-g7-countries","tag-government","tag-government-gross-debt","tag-government-spending","tag-gross-debt","tag-net-debt","tag-percentage-points","tag-sovereign-debt","tag-sovereign-debt-crisis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}