That's another very good question. Let me start by going back to what we experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this country we had something like 20 years of deficit financing at all levels of government. Our public sector debt levels accumulated to a level that was actually higher than the size of our Canadian economy, and we began to see the implications of that in terms of the performance of the Canadian economy. There is what we call a risk premium; interest rates were higher than they would be in the absence of that amount of borrowing.
We also saw taxes going up to finance the debt servicing. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the percentage of every tax dollar taken in to service the debt was very high. From a macroeconomic perspective, and that's really all we can talk about, we made considerable progress in getting that debt-to-GDP ratio down to levels that are actually lower than you would find amongst the G-7 countries, and from our perspective that's an important contributing factor to broad stable macroeconomic performance. I think from the point of view of preserving that sound macroeconomic framework that we have in place, we need to continue to keep a focus on keeping those debt levels down.
Indeed, my view would be to continue to get debt-to-GDP ratios down further.