Canada's fiscal advantage

In the case of the public debt, the comparison is made more difficult by the inclusion of trust funds, primarily for social security and health care, in the unified budget of the US federal government and the exclusion of the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans (CPP/QPP) from budgetary transactions in Canada. [...] In the latter year, the ratio of interest payments to GDP in Canada compared to that of the US had fallen to half a percentage point, which is one-quarter of the difference that existed in 1995. [...] Government Spending A comparison of the pattern and evolution of program spending in Canada and the United States from 1992 to 2001 is found in Table 2. The results for 2001 indicate that government spending on goods and services and on transfers to persons and businesses (under the category total program spending) as a percentage of GDP is higher in Canada than in the US by 2.9 percentage points. [...] Focusing on the changes between 1992 and 2001, the period of fiscal restraint in both countries, the most notable trends are (a) a reduction in the scope of government as measured by the ratio of government spending to GDP, (b) a much faster rate of decline in Canada (-9.8 percentage points) than in the United States (-1.9 percentage points), and (c) a reduction in the gap between Canada and the U [...] Since Canada and the US were roughly on the same stage of the business cycle in 2001, the fiscal comparison provides a general indication of differences in the overall size of government relative to the economy.