Like father like son. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The more things change ...

Choose whatever old saying you like. Any one of them will cover the spending habits of the current federal Liberal government.

The largest peacetime expansion of the federal government took place in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s under Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals. And it looks as if his son, current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is about to launch the Second Great Expansion.

In preparation for his upcoming budget, federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Monday that the Liberal government is getting set to “invest in … helping those most vulnerable.” That’s codespeak for “we’re gonna party like there’s no tomorrow using taxpayer dollars!”

On Tuesday, the Fraser Institute released a study of federal spending since 1867. It predicts that the Second Great Expansion is coming soon.

A few quick basics. Total federal spending is currently around $330 billion. That is nearly double what it was 15 years ago. On a per capita, inflation-adjusted basis, Ottawa spends at least a third more than it did in 2000.

For what? Can you point your finger at the one-third more in federal services, programs and payments you receive?

How about your one-third tax reduction? Didn’t get one?

I thought not. That’s because the largest single chunk of new federal spending has been on civil servants’ pay.

You may recall then-Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin’s austerity budget of 1995. In it, he cut federal spending and announced the gradual layoff of 45,000 civil servants.

By about 2005, that many new civil servants had been hired back. Indeed, more than had been fired were hired back.

However, unlike those federal workers let go in the 1990s, most of whom were blue-collar and clerical, the ones hired back were mostly professionals – lawyers, regulators, managers, scientists and so on. And they came with salaries that were 50 per cent, 100 per cent and more of the laid-off workers’.

Ottawa continues to fund a sizeable chunk of what it spends with borrowed money. That’s not unique to the Liberals. The largest deficit (more than $55 billion) in our history came under Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009, the year after the worldwide financial crisis.

The largest deficit as a percentage of GDP came in 1984 under Conservative PM Brian Mulroney – more than 8.1 per cent of GDP (versus 3.7 per cent for the Harper government’s 2009 red ink).

Still, the Justin Trudeau Liberals appear set to jack up even further the size of the debt and the amount of money Ottawa borrows each year to cover its rampant spending.

Under first the Pierre Trudeau Liberals and then the Mulroney Tories, Canada’s per capita debt grew to a level twice as high as when our country was fighting the Second World War. After nearly two decades of work by the Paul Martin Liberals and then the Harper Tories, the debt was back down to manageable levels.

But this budget year, the national debt will hit about $670 billion. And according to the federal government’s own Finance department, if spending continues the way it has in Justin Trudeau’s first 15 months in office, there will be deficits for another 30 or more years.

At that point our debt-to-GDP ratio will be up around 22 per cent.

And there is absolutely no way on God’s green earth that this federal shopping spree is sustainable without big tax hikes on the middle class. Canada simply has too few “rich” people to pay for Trudeau’s delusion of higher spending and lower middle-class taxes.

Hold on to your wallets.

Editor's note: This column has been changed to reflect federal debt and debt-to-GDP ratio projections.