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Mr. Know it all:

If you wanna call it debt instead of deficit that's your perogative. The debt is the accumulated deficit, big deal. For years and years Canada was having deficits in the billions each year. The government medicare program sucks. We wait hours and hours in emrgency rooms like a banana republic. The tax rates differ in different provinces. We in Quebec have two civil services, one at the federal level and another at the Quebec level. That's where our tax dollars go. Our net pay is not sufficient. In Quebec, when you go over $100,000, you start to get taxed at the highest rate of 48%. That's the equivalent of 70,000 US. Imagive the highest bracket starts at 70,000 US!! Boy we're so rich. In fact we can't deduct mortgage interest or property taxes. The average american claims that as an itemized deduction and effectively reduces his tax rate to below 25% even for taxable income in excess of $ 100,000 US.
Almost every country in Europe allows a mortgage interest deduction. So please give it up. You pay less taxes in the U.S. and that's it.

It's about time we started getting surpluses. In addition to the income taxes, they have just raised property taxes which amount to approx 2-2.5% of the estimated municipal value of the property. In addition to all this we pay 7% GST and another 7.5% Quebec QST on every single purchase of goods or services. We're taxed to the death.

I sure hope they will pay down the debt with the surplus and not waste it on their pathetic government programs. Just the CBC gets 800,000,000 a year. What a f...g waste especially listening to their news programs, it makes the stomach turn.

The US is a very rich country. They have a lot more room to tax people than they do over here. They can just raise their sales tax rate a couple of percentage points and wipe out their deficit.

Goodbye.

If you wanna call it debt instead of deficit that's your perogative.

No, that's proper terminology. Deficit is an annual budgetary term. And both our debt AND our deficit are way higher than yours. Both in actual dollars AND per capita. 7.5 trillion dollars. Even for the most powerful economy on the planet, that is no laughing matter. And it continues to rise by about 1.6 billion a day. While you are paying yours off, we add "one of yours" to ours, about every nine months. Our interest payments exceed your entire debt.

You pay less taxes in the U.S. and that's it.

Yes, you do. I never disputed that. But don't make it sound like it's all free down here.

The average american claims that as an itemized deduction and effectively reduces his tax rate to below 25% even for taxable income in excess of $ 100,000 US.

So? The equivalent in BC or Alberta is around 33%. Then you add our health insurance and all of a sudden we're a few percentage points apart. I have friends moving from Silicon Valley to BC because they get more for their money than in California. They are always shocked to see how much they keep up there and how much reality differs from the rumor of the overtaxed country.

The US is a very rich country. They have a lot more room to tax people than they do over here. They can just raise their sales tax rate a couple of percentage points and wipe out their deficit.

No, we can't. We don't have a general federal sales tax and trying to implement one would be political suicide. Instead we irresponsibly watch our debt go up and hope that one day it'll all miraculously go away. Like in a Disney movie. It's not gonna happen.