I guess it all depends on what measures you use. By the way, my previous posts should have stated that the numbers were debt as a proportion of GDP, not the ratio, and I apologize for the error. Still, if you look at the debt as a proportion of GDP, in 1985, the first year of "post-Trudeau" rule, the proportion of GDP had climbed to 67%. After 10 years of Conservative rule, it had climbed to 95.6%, a number that the incoming Liberals rightly saw as unsustainable. Meanwhile, in the US, the debt-as-proportion-of-GDP had climbed to 69%, and the climb was pretty constant during the previous administrations, whether Democrat or Republican. I'm not trying to defend PET's economic policies: I'm just suggesting that he wasn't really any worse at accumulating debt that many leaders that weren't Liberal. A plague on both their houses.