One of the things that have troubled me over the last few years is that we have been paying attention to the net debt—that's all of the government's liabilities minus its assets—but the cost of servicing the debt is a gross interest number that shows up in the budget. It's comparing apples and oranges when you look at those two things, because the federal government's debt servicing costs are a function of its total debt, not the net debt that you see at the bottom line of the budgets.
What's been happening over the last few years is the government has also been financing a large number of its operations through additions to the asset side of its balance sheet. In other words, they're making loans and advances. They don't show up in the deficit, but that debt does need to be serviced, and the return on those investments, which is not a number that gets much attention, has been quite low relative to the financial assets.
It's very important to pay attention to the total amount of debt, not just the net debt that's at the bottom line of the public accounts and the budgets, because that's what we're paying interest on, and those costs are going up faster than the investment return on the government's financial assets.