Canada’s federal debt-to-GDP ratio will grow and remain above its 2022–23 level for two years before gradually declining over the medium term, according to an assessment by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), despite the federal government’s earlier promises of deficit reduction.
Budget 2023 projected that the ratio would rise from 42.4 percent in 2022–23 to 43.5 percent and then 43.2 percent respectively for the next two years, before starting to fall below the 2022–23 level, and that it would decline to 39.9 percent in 2027–28.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland had said on April 7, 2022, upon the release of Budget 2022, that the federal government was “absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline.”…