Let's add a little perspective here...

To be clear, I'm certainly no fan of deficit spending. Everything I've ever heard or read about PM Harper assures me that neither is he. Indeed, I don't doubt that his options in dealing with a financial and economic crisis, one definitely not of his making, has cost him many sleepless nights.

And, as he recently noted, maybe his job before this is over. If Harper is anything, he's first and foremost a realist.

Here are several reference points to consider in order to put the looming, so called "record" deficit into perspective...

Debt as a % of GDP

All you need to know here is that the lower this ratio is, the healthier is the economy.

In 1998 the ratio for Canada was 50.1%.

According to the latest stats from the OECD, as of 2008 our debt to GDP ratio is 28.6%.

To add perspective, here's a list of ratios from other leading economic powers, taken from the afore linked chart, as of 2008:

Germany - 38.9%
UK - 60.6%
France - 54.2%
Italy - 97.7%
Japan (2007) - 162.9%
USA - 40.4%
S. Korea - 29.1%

It's plainly obvious that, compared to others, most of them G8 nations, we're in pretty good shape...in fact, quite enviably so.

And when this is over, hopefully soon, we will still be in pretty good shape, certainly compared to afore mentioned.

Theory of Relativity-wise

Next, while $50 billion no doubt is a lot of dough, and would be arguably a record figure, it's germane to put it into some sort of relative context.

Circa 1990, and in rough numbers (because I'm not gonna dig around the net for hours to get the exact data), the federal government was racking up $30 to $40 billion deficits that represented something in the order of, give or take, 40% of total government spending. And they were doing so at roughly double today's interest rates...if not more.

$50 billion this year, on the other hand, will represent about 20% of total federal spending.

Further, doing some basic math that involves an average 3% inflation rate over the 18 years since 1990, which is conservative for the earlier years, a 1990 dollar equates to about a buck, seventy today.

In other words, the recently projected $50 billion deficit roughly equals $29 billion in 1990 dough.

Point being, relatively speaking, the projected deficit for 2009 in fact comes nowhere close to those being incurred circa 1990, definitely not with regard to long term costs. Indeed, if we go back to the Trudeau - Liberal years, the current deficit pales in comparison.

Additionally, the projected deficit does not involve "structural" spending. So what does that mean?

Simply this: If the government spends that money to rebuild/upgrade some sort of infrastructure, such as a highway or sea port facility, the spending stops when the project is completed. In fact, it can be reasonably argued that from that point forward, the government actually starts to save or earn money from the improvement.

However...

If the government launches, say f'rinstance, a "national childcare program"...I don't know why this example pops into my mind...creating an entire new branch of bureaucracy and a permanent ongoing social program, costing $10 billion this year, it will go on to inflate every year thereafter, and do so basically until hell freezes over...guaranteed by the reality that Liberals will quickly pronounce, ad infinitum until you wanna puke, that "this defines us as a nation", and that anyone who dares oppose it, or even amend it, obviously is some kind of "un-Canadian", knuckle-dragging, sonuva bitch, who should be, in the minimum, neutered so as not to be able to reproduce.

You know, in the same manner as they did with "Medicare".

And thus we have what becomes a contributor to "structural deficit".

Forget that it will become a bloated, blood sucking, bureaucratic nightmare from hell that inevitably will grow to consume ever more ridiculous gobs of future budgets all the way out to the year 3,056,043 and beyond...and no doubt still mostly staffed with Liberal has-beens from the Martin/Chretien years.

Last, but certainly not least, if one doesn't innately know that the "Coalition of the Damned" we almost got shoved up our collective asses would have boned us all with a deficit twice this large, laughing all the way, then the change one has in their pocket is probably sporting Mickey Mouse's profile, seeing as they are living in Disneyland.

...the one in France.