Pay no attention to the broken windows. All the right people are still getting rich.

… Parliamentary Budget Officer Annette Ryan warned that federal debt is growing twice as fast as deficits. That’s because loans to Crown corporations are booked as assets, and military purchases are expensed slowly over time.

“This obscures the realities of cash debt and raises questions about whether the current fiscal framework provides a complete and transparent picture of Canada’s fiscal sustainability,” Ryan said, according to The Globe and Mail.

The Globe reports the PBO now sees federal debt rising to $1.67 trillion in 2030-31 from $1.3 trillion in 2025-26. It points to Build Canada Homes, the Canada Strong Fund and the proposed defence investment Crown as examples of the Crown corporation model.

The PBO’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook projects cumulative deficits of $333.3 billion over the next five years, while federal borrowing rises by $732.9 billion. It projects public debt charges, the budget’s fastest-growing expense, at $59.3 billion in 2026-27, up from $24.5 billion in 2021-22, and at $83.0 billion by 2030-31. The National Post also reported the debt-charge figures.

The PBO also says new spending has already used up the oil-price windfall.

So here’s the question nobody in Ottawa wants to answer. Why? Why book hundreds of billions in borrowing as “assets”? Why spread military purchases out so they barely show up on the books? Why does the government’s own budget watchdog have to tell you the real numbers? If the finances were fine, they wouldn’t need to hide them. And yet they keep hiding the numbers.

Not related, but it rhymes: “He had people inside financial institutions”