VANCOUVER—Canada experienced the second highest increase in its total debt relative to the size of the economy (GDP) from 2019 to 2021 compared to 33 industrialized countries, behind only Japan, finds a new study published by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“Despite Canada’s comparatively high debt accumulation during the pandemic, which many argued would result in strong economic performance, we actually underperformed most of our peers,” said Tegan Hill, economist at the Fraser Institute and co-author of The Accumulated Debt and Economic Performance of Industrialized Countries during COVID.
