The basic math is that the more you spend on debt servicing, the less you have to spend on anything else, as I said in my remarks. That includes health care, education and all the things that I think Canadians cherish and want more of, including international aid and more spending on defence. As we did in the 1990s, the more we spend on interest rates rising and servicing our debt, the less we spend on these core missions of the state, the core part.
I think it's important to say, Mr. Chair, that the fiscal anchor is not an end in itself. What the fiscal anchor is trying to protect is the ability of the government to preserve its capacity to give services and programs to Canadians without hiking taxes and without cutting programs. That was so difficult to go through in the 1990s when we had to do it.
The whole idea is to preserve that capacity so that we don't have to go back to a situation where governments, any governments, have to do difficult things and then, unfortunately, hurt Canadians with program cuts or higher taxes.