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Why? Because in 2014/15, the year before the government was elected, the ratio stood at 30.9 per cent. By 2019/20, the last year of its current mandate, the 2017 budget forecasts the debt-to-GDP ratio will be 31.5 per cent. So contrary to the government’s latest promise, the ratio is not going down over its mandate — it’s going up.

And crucially, there are a number of reasons why the debt-to-GDP ratio may be higher than the government now projects. For one thing, the projections are based on questionable assumptions about Ottawa dramatically slowing the rate of spending growth in the future.

Starting in 2018/19, the budget plans to reduce inflation adjusted per-person spending, which would be a marked departure from the government’s track record. There’s no plan for how exactly such spending restraint will be delivered. And equally important, it contradicts the government’s own rhetoric about how more spending will help grow the economy.

In fact, using assumptions about future spending that more closely align with the government’s track record to date, Ottawa may add up to another $122 billion in debt over what it’s currently projecting from 2018/19 to 2021/22. That would cause the debt-to-GDP ratio to rise further still, potentially reaching 33.0 per cent by 2021/22.

Importantly, these revised debt projections do not account for other risks that could cause the debt to climb even higher including lower-than-expected economic growth and higher-than-expected interest rates.

Less than two years into the government’s mandate, it’s increasingly worrying the number of times it has discarded its fiscal anchor when the discipline it is meant to impose becomes inconvenient. With the unceremonious discarding of the debt-to-GDP promise, it’s clear that federal fiscal policy is being set without any fiscal anchor at all.

Charles Lammam, Ben Eisen and Milagros Palacios are analysts with the Fraser Institute.

www.fraserinstitute.org