Deficit Demon‪.‬

In Canada and around the globe, government deficits have been a growing problem for decades. But now that they are finally being brought under control -- at tremendous sacrifice to public services -- a sort of anti-deficit religion is gaining strength, with rigid articles of faith such as "balanced budget legislation." There is no question that the ballooning deficits of the past have left us with weighty debt problems and have limited our public policy choices, but are those who claim to be protecting future generations from the demon deficit in reality crippling the democracy of the twenty-first century? In Benjamin Disraeli's novel Sybil, there is a conversation between the young editor Stephen Morley and the idealist Charles Egremont, one of the heroes of the book. Egremont is boasting that Queen Victoria, "reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed." And Morley asks, "Which nation?" He goes on to say: