A response that I made to somebody posting a comment on PET's deficits and why Wilson and Martin took a different approach has vanished into nowhere. Essentially, the poster conveniently forgot that it was Wilson and Mulroney who left Martin and Chretien faced with an unacceptably high debt to GDP ratio, not PET, with the IMF threatening a debt downgrade. Wilson was part of the problem, not part of the solution. Also pretty much every other country was runningdeficits during PET's time in office and PET was also spending 2% of GDP on defence, unlike subsequent governments, notably Harper who took it below 1% while racking up $160 billion in new debt!