So Harper could ladle pork like a Liberal. Better, in fact. Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin reduced the national debt by $90 billion and left a budgetary surplus of $14 billion. Harper's six deficits added $150 billion to the national debt.

Not his fault, you say? Perhaps so, although Harper certainly made the red ink deeper by cutting the GST and adding $14 billion a year to the deficit. Add on all the tax cuts for hockey moms and firefighters and parents and, well, Harper even contrived to double the budget for prisons at a time when crime was falling.

The end result was lower taxes and higher debt. The two are not wholly unrelated.

Even so, a rising debt can still be a smaller slice of the economy if the economy grows.

That's the big picture: Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio is on a slow, downward creep, from 30 per cent to 25 per cent, which is better than our G7 partners. It's a meaningful measure of fiscal health. If Harper wants to be judged by the economy, then it could be a lot worse.

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