National debt clock pays visit to Brandon

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This article was published 28/03/2022 (1328 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A campaign to bring awareness to Canada’s growing debt made a stop in Brandon to show how much each person owes.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s debt clock made a stop at the Keystone Inn on Saturday morning so passersby on one of the city’s main streets could get a good look at the $1.1 trillion and counting national debt in real time, along with what the federation has calculated to be a single Canadian’s share.

This is a nationwide campaign to call on the Trudeau government to stop the “deep dive” into debt, said Canadian Taxpayers Federation federal director Franco Terrazzano. It started in B.C. and is heading eastward.

According to the clock, each person in the country owes a little more than $30,000, and that number is growing along with the national debt, which itself is growing at a rate of $4,500 every second, or $400 million daily.

“I don’t know a lot of people who have that kind of money lying around for their politicians’ credit card bills,” he said. We’ve been doing this since the ’90s in some form, and we made one mistake: we underestimated politicians’ ability to spend other people’s money.”

The digital clock is displayed on both sides of the truck’s cab, with a running tally of the debt. It’s a new truck, Terrazzano said, as they had to replace the previous truck because it didn’t have enough space for a trillion-dollar-sized number.

Their stop in Brandon was brief, but they were getting a lot of honks and people pulling in to look at the clock and talk about the campaign. People’s reactions have been shock and concern for the financial future of their children and grandchildren. Terrazzano said they get their data straight from the federal government’s own budget and calculate based on a per-capita basis through Statistics Canada’s population numbers.

The biggest question they get is how to get these numbers to go down. The federation has met and spoken to cabinet ministers over the years, most recently last February when they presented to the federal Finance Committee. They submitted a 75-page budget submission on how the federal government could balance its budget within a few years simply by bringing spending to pre-pandemic levels. Government spending was at an all-time high in 2018, Terrazzano said. “This means the Trudeau government spent more before COVID and a national recession, than any federal government in a single year during World War II,” he said.

Dieter Petersen was among the passersby who couldn’t help but look at the clock in awe, and not in a good way. He said he believes the clock is accurate, adding this debt has to be paid, and that will fall to Canadian citizens at some point.

“We know this debt will never be fully paid, we will always have a deficit,” he said. “But we absolutely need to see this and be aware of it.”

This is a visual reminder that we have to be more careful with our money, he said. He really couldn’t say what the solution was, but the debt has to come down.

“What is the answer? In the time we live in, it’s very hard to tell,” he said.

The national debt clock moved to Portage la Prairie on Saturday afternoon, and Terrazzano said he will be having a press conference in Winnipeg today.

» kmckinley@brandonsun.com

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