Again, that speaks to why we do fiscal sustainability analysis that looks at what actions you need to take to stabilize that. I think we've experienced it in Canada. We know what it feels like to have rapidly rising debt relative to the size of the economy. We saw that in 1990s. I witnessed it when I worked at both the Department of Finance and the Privy Council Office at that time.
Your debt rises and the carrying cost of that debt rises. We saw our debt at the federal level peak at 68% relative to GDP in the mid-1990s. The carrying cost in terms of budgetary revenues peaked when roughly 37¢ of every revenue dollar went to public debt interest charges.
In 2007-08 we brought those numbers down to a 29% debt-to-GDP ratio, and our carrying cost was down to 13¢ on every budget revenue dollar. If you can maintain those healthy fiscal balances, avoid those structural deficits, and deal with these issues ahead of time, before they get out of control, you'll have the kind of position we had going into this recession in 2008-09. There's much more flexibility to deal with the issue, as well as some of the investment issues we need to deal with.