The great magician Harry Houdini once said , “What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.” This is the philosophy Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals appear to be utilizing to downplay the dire fiscal situation they have put Canada in.

As the Liberals doubled the size of the national debt during the pandemic, then-finance minister Chrystia Freeland was fond of talking up Canada’s relatively low debt-to-GDP ratio.

Never mind the $40-billion deficit projected in last year’s budget, as the government was meeting all of its “objectives,” including “our fiscal anchor — a declining federal debt-to-GDP ratio over the medium term,” she said last year.

That number was always a bit of a trick , as our relative performance changes depending on what method is used to calculate

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