Op-Ed: Canada's national debt on the rise again

While preaching the gospel of deficit reduction, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been running up the national debt to record levels.

Since the Conservatives took power in 2006, the national debt has skyrocketed upward almost 100 billion dollars or 20%. One wonders, at a time when more and more European countries are finding themselves in dire straights as a result of overwhelming debt loads, why the Conservatives would drive the country into the same predicament? However, listening to Stephen Harper, you would get the impression that he has been doing exactly the opposite and keeping spending under control. Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived at a crisis-atmosphere G20 summit late Wednesday prepared to preach the Canadian gospel of economic prudence, bank regulation and deficit reduction. In reality, debt levels have been rising steadily under a Conservative government. Much of this debt can be attributed to the governments policy of borrowing money from private banks, when they could just as easily borrow it from the Bank of Canada interest and capital free. There are two ways of looking at this: it could be considered fiscal irresponsibility, or it could be described as corporate welfare. Either way, it costs Canadians 87 million dollars a day and will cost hundreds of billions more in future interest charges.