Pierre Poilievre on Instruction to Committee on Bill C-2

Madam Speaker, the question I asked was, “How much debt do Canadians owe, publicly and privately?”, and the finance minister said she could not say. This is the person responsible for the finances of the nation, so I asked the top bureaucrat she had on the panel with her. He said he did not know either, so I went to Statistics Canada, which just by chance updated that number today. Therefore, I announce, on the floor of the House of Commons, that Canadians owe nine trillion dollars. That is “trillion” with a “t”. Our debt level is now 371% of our GDP, $3.71 of debt for every dollar of output. That is nearly double the historic level, and it is a massive risk that could lead to detonation when interest rates return to normal.