Balance the federal operating budget within three years. Establish an independent Office of Monetary Accountability to audit the Bank of Canada. No Central Bank Digital Currency without a national referendum.
The federal debt stood at $1,266.5 billion at March 31, 2025 — 41.2% of GDP. Government gross debt per capita crossed the six-figure mark in the fourth quarter of 2025, reaching $100,929. For context, nominal GDP per capita stands at $78,858. The government now owes more per person than Canadians produce per person in an entire year.
The federal government ran a deficit of $36.3 billion in 2024-25. Interest on that debt costs 10.3 cents of every revenue dollar the federal government collects — money that cannot be spent on healthcare, housing, or any other public priority. Every year that spending exceeds revenue, the debt grows, and the interest burden grows with it. This is not a temporary problem. It is a compounding one.
Between 2007 and 2025, the federal government accumulated nearly double the amount of debt that it spent the previous two decades repaying. The fiscal consolidation of the 1990s — which brought Canada from the edge of an IMF bailout to a budget surplus in four years through a seven-to-one ratio of spending cuts to tax increases — has been entirely reversed.
At the same time, the Bank of Canada's balance sheet expanded dramatically during the pandemic through quantitative easing. This monetary expansion contributed to the inflation surge of 2021-2023 that drove shelter costs, food prices, and everyday expenses to levels not seen in forty years. The Bank of Canada's mandate, accountability structure, and the relationship between monetary policy and federal fiscal choices have never been subject to independent public audit.
Set your household size and see exactly what the federal debt costs you — and how fast it is growing.
Federal net debt per capita: Statistics Canada, Consolidated Canadian Government Finance Statistics 2024. Total federal debt: Government of Canada Annual Financial Report 2024-25. Population: Statistics Canada Q4 2024.
Balance the federal operating budget within three years. We would distinguish between capital investment — infrastructure, housing, productive assets — and operating expenditure. The operating budget, excluding capital, would be balanced within the first parliamentary term by eliminating program spending that duplicates provincial jurisdiction and reducing the federal public service through attrition to pre-2015 levels.
Establish an Office of Monetary Accountability. The Bank of Canada operates with very limited independent scrutiny. We would establish a new parliamentary office — modelled on the Parliamentary Budget Officer — to audit the Bank's quantitative easing programs, model the distributional effects of monetary policy on Canadians of different income levels, and report annually to Parliament. The Governor would be required to appear before this office twice annually.
Index federal spending to GDP growth. Federal program spending has grown faster than the economy in every year since 2015. We would legislate a requirement that federal operating expenditure growth not exceed nominal GDP growth except in declared national emergencies.
No Central Bank Digital Currency without a referendum. A CBDC would give the government unprecedented surveillance and control over how Canadians use their money — the ability to monitor every transaction, impose expiry dates on savings, and exclude individuals from the financial system without due process. We would prohibit implementation of any CBDC without a national referendum.
Acknowledge Bitcoin as a legal savings instrument. Canadians who choose to save in Bitcoin should be able to do so without punitive tax treatment on every transaction. We would advocate for removing GST/HST from Bitcoin-to-Canadian dollar conversions and treating long-term Bitcoin holdings as a capital asset with the same treatment as real estate.
Fiscal consolidation is not a cost — it reduces future costs. Returning to balanced operating budgets saves approximately $36 billion annually in deficit financing within three years. The Office of Monetary Accountability would cost approximately $15 million annually — roughly equivalent to one parliamentary committee secretariat.
Fiscal consolidation saves ~$36B annually within 3 years. Office of Monetary Accountability: ~$15M/year — equivalent to one parliamentary committee secretariat.