"$17B deficit on a $2T economy is like someone who makes $200K a year having $500 credit card balance. It's a joke." ... if there ever was a sillier comment on these threads, we'd hard pressed to find it.  We are at the top of an economic cycle.  It took some years to bring federal spending into balance by 2015 after the serious world downturn from 2008 to 2011. Recovery didn't start in earnest until 2011 and harper's deficits prevented the  economy from brutally crushing canadians. The price for that was added debt, a lot of it, which is now financed in an increasing rate environment. 

The time for reducing that debt, and the financing burden on the taxpayer is NOW.  There should be NO deficits at all, we should be running surpluses in anticipation of the next downturn.