Mr. Speaker, when a city in Quebec posts a deficit, the first penny from the following year’s taxes goes toward paying down that debt.
When a deficit is posted, citizens must be taxed in order to pay it down immediately, not in 20 or 30 years. Municipalities know that they cannot use money they do not have to repair streets and do all sorts of things. They cannot post a deficit.
I really appreciate this question, because that surprised me as well. The Liberals got elected saying that they would post a very small deficit, and in the end it turned out to be very big.