I attach a great deal of importance to it. I think we're at a level of debt to GDP now of over 300%. It's definitely a level at which debt crises tend to occur. We've seen repeatedly within the last decade in the western world that countries with very high levels of debt almost inevitably at some point will have trouble servicing that debt and have problems in their financial sector and so on and so forth.
It's hard though. You can't just point a finger at one sector. As I mentioned, all sectors in our economy have gorged on debt: household, corporations, government. You can't pick out one and say it's their fault. It seems to be a response that all Canadians have done this because, first of all, the Bank of Canada cut interest rates to historically low levels. The bank has issued some warnings about household debt. It's very interesting. They have next to nothing to say about corporate debt, which is the highest in the western world. They have next to nothing to say about government debt.
At the same time the federal government did run up big deficits during 2008-2009. I think it's inevitable that when you are in a severe downturn, you're going to run deficits. You simply cannot cut spending enough. When you're in a downturn there are going to be deficits, but you want to get out of those as quickly as possible.
What I think has encouraged people to go into debt since 2015 is the fact that the Bank of Canada lowered interest rates, the government said they were going to run deficits and it sounded like it was a good thing. There was nobody saying, “Oh, there are risks to this strategy”. Instead people just said, “Well, interest rates are low, so, great, let's run up some debts”. Here we are today where if interest rates ever did turn up or if our incomes ever did start falling, we would be in a considerable amount of trouble.