I think it has to be understood that what I'm raising today is sort of the next issue once we start getting back into recovery. [Technical difficulty—Editor] anticipate at some point the Minister of Finance is going to have to present a budget, and it's going to be very important, I think, to change the expectations. Right now there's so much money being poured out it can't continue at the pace it's going. We're already starting to move back to 1995. We're already at 2001 in terms of our official net debt. We've gone back now almost 20 years in terms of our debt load. I suspect that we will have a high deficit next year again—not anything like we're seeing right now, but this will be an issue where the government will have to start changing expectations. Let's be honest; no politician has $2.2 trillion sitting in their pocket to substitute for the whole economy.
In terms of your question, if you look around the world, statutory fiscal rules are actually fairly commonplace. In fact, the study I mentioned, the one that German economists have recently done, is quite fascinating. It's based on three datasets, with a lot of different work done. They show that actually it does contribute to more growth. The question at the federal level is this: What fiscal rule will the federal government even consider? In the past, it was not to let the debt-to-GDP ratio go up. That actually didn't happen, even before this COVID thing. There was some boost in the debt-to-GDP ratio in the past few years, but it didn't go up a lot. It didn't go up dramatically. It has gone up dramatically now, and it will go up dramatically again next year unless we control what's happening. That creates a lack of confidence by the market in the economy, and you end up getting credit spreads as a result.
To give you an example, look at provincial bond credit spreads today over the government bond rate. Alberta, despite having the lowest debt per capita amongst all the provinces, now has the second-highest provincial bond rate, below only Newfoundland and Labrador. The reason for this is that the market is saying that Alberta's fiscal situation is a problem, and the province has to show a plan that it's going to be able to get its fiscal picture under control. That interest cost is an additional cost to the government when we really want to get people back to work and use the money to get people back to work.