Mr. Speaker, it could stop spending more than it is bringing in. At some point, we have to return to a budget balance. There is no way one can continue spending with deficits of this size forever. It is fiscally unsustainable. As we do, it is going to lead to more and more debt on which we have to pay interest. It is going to crowd out lending in the private sector, which will drive up interest rates for those who are paying mortgages or have other forms of indebtedness. Everybody who does have debt suffers in a high interest rate environment.
Every individual who is a creditor or who owns shares in a company or has a pension fund that owns bonds is wealthier, and they do better in a higher interest rate environment. In the Parliamentary Budget Officer's paper on the relative amount of spending power for different quintiles in the population, he points out that the result of higher interest rates has been that the wealthier in Canada are getting wealthier and the poorest are getting poorer.