The numbers are jaw-dropping — and they keep getting worse.

In a recent report, Financial Accountability Officer Stephen LeClair said Ontario’s net debt will reach $350 billion by 2020-21. He warned this province’s debt burden is one of the highest among Canada’s provincial governments and an interest rate hike could put its credit and “fiscal flexibility” at risk.

This province has the largest sub-national debt of any jurisdiction in the developed world. With a population a third of California’s, our debt load is double that of the biggest U.S. state. LeClair’s worried the province’s 12-year, $160-billion capital spending spree is driving us further into the red.

In his annual report last week, LeClair raised another troubling issue - and it’s one we hear frequently from independent officers of the Legislature — from the auditor to the Ombudsman.

He’s stonewalled when it comes to gaining access to the information he needs to make his assessments.

He reported he’s made six freedom of information requests. Four of these requests have been partially fulfilled and two have not been fulfilled.

“The FAO especially needs internal government information to examine the financial impact of a particular government bill or policy measure announced in the budget,” he said in his report.

Once upon the time, the numbers would have set off alarm bells. Voters would have risen up with pitchforks to toss out any government that treated their tax dollars with such contempt.

Debt and government spending were once issues voters cared passionately about. Not so any more.

Is that because we’ve all maxed out our credit cards, our lines of credit and are mortgaged to the hilt and just don’t care any more?

Or is it simply that we don’t understand the math?

Could it be we don’t know the difference between $1 billion and $1 million?

Isn’t that “b” just a typo?

I asked University of Toronto Math Professor Emeritus Peter Rosenthal to put the numbers into a context people who are math challenged — as I am — can understand.

His response was fascinating — and humourous.

• “A million is a thousand times a thousand. For example, if a television costs $1,000, you could buy 1,000 televisions for a million dollars.

• “A billion is a thousand times a million. Therefore a military expenditure of a billion dollars for fighter jets could instead buy a million television sets at a thousand dollars each, or could instead buy a thousand houses at a million dollars each.”

So what does that mean on a per-person basis?

Well, if you spread this province’s debt across the entire country, here’s what every person would owe:

• “If you round Canada’s population down a bit to 30 million (it’s really more like 35 million), $300 billion would be $10,000 for each person in Canada.

“(If you want a more accurate figure, using the population of Canada as 35 million, then $300 billion would be about $8,571.43 per person.)” he said.

Using the same TV set math:

• “You could buy 300 million television sets for $300 billion if the TVs were a thousand dollars each,”

And spread over only the population of this province:

• “The $300 billion debt is about $20,000 for each of Ontario’s approximately 13.6 million people. Thus $300 billion could buy every Ontario resident about 22 TVs at $1,000 each.

“But there is so little worth watching on TV!” Rosenthal concluded.

Isn’t that the truth?

Just think of his math lesson as a healthy dose of reality TV.

cblizzard@postmedia.com