Mr. Flagherty. The whipping boy of the Canadian chattering classes.

True, their $31-billion interest payments, 11% of total income, are well under the maximum around 32% banks want you devoting to mortgage payments. But when you take out a mortgage you get a house.
Jim Flaherty doesn’t even have a vacant lot to show for his $650-billion national debt, plus huge unfunded liabilities in various social programs and a hole in public pensions understated in ways you should not imitate in discussions with your bank.
So, Comrade Flaherty, if you’re after financial idiots messing up the economy, look in the mirror, not out the window.

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Alethia

"Jim Flaherty doesn't even have a vacant lot to show for HIS 650B national debt?"
Some decent points fade away while this author resorts to frankly, intellectually dishonest exaggeration.  As detestable is national debt is to Canadians, to hang it all around the finance minister is more than unfair.  I hardly think that the country of Canada, with all its riches is a vacant lot.  I mean really?  Hospitals, and highways, and cities and industry and jobs amount to just a bit more than a vacant lot.
Obama added 8 trillion dollars to the national debt (US), in the past 4 years.  Since Canada's metrics compare to 10% of the US in general terms, that would equate to Flaherty adding 800 Billion dollars to Canada's national debt--putting us near 1.4 Trillion--more than double what we currently handle.  That Canada has escaped this devastating yoke, so debilitating to economies around the world, is miraculous.  I can't help but think that had the Liberals or NDP been in power, they would have followed Obama's lead and put us into similar financial straits. 
I am becoming convinced against the sentiment of authors like this and the mentality of the herd in Canada, that history will measure the government against previous governments, and global governments of the present day, and hail Mr. Harper as the greatest PM since John A.  And Mr. Flaherty, who will be forgotten as most finance ministers are, will never-the-less be the man who handed Mr. Harper his fame on a golden platter.