Victoria Grant doesn’t like how much debt Canada has accumulated (currently almost $600 billion). Here she is giving a lecture at the Public Banking Institute conference in Philadelphia about the need to reform the country’s monetary policy. She is 12 years old.
Her main beef is that when the federal government needs money, it goes to private banks to borrow at high interest rates rather than just creating the money through the Bank of Canada. Until the 1970s, this is exactly what the government did, and Canada’s public debt was relatively stable. Since then, however, the debt load has increased. According to economist George Crowell, governments across Canada pay about $60 billion in interest each year to private banks. The Department of Finance says that’s about 11 cents of every tax dollar it collects.
Although Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio is still manageable, it certainly doesn’t make sense to pay extra when the government doesn’t have to.
Huffington Post