Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for giving me the opportunity to point out something that needs to be raised in this House, and that is how bad the deterioration of the fiscal situation has become in this country.
The truth is, and I believe my hon. colleague will know this, that Canada's federation is structured differently than other countries in the G7. We hold massive amounts of what is called “sub-sovereign debt” in our provinces. Historically speaking, the federal government has backstopped those provinces if necessary. Looking at total government debt, according to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, Canada is the seventh most indebted country in the entire world. We are right up there with Italy and France. We are right up there with the United States, but it has the world's reserve currency, so it has a slightly different set of circumstances to deal with.
If the government truly thinks that sub-sovereign debt should not matter in that calculation, as it does in all the international metrics, then it should get up and declare publicly that it is not willing to support or back any provincial governments that may run into problems down the road. Barring that, we need to start looking at total government debt in this—