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N.L. has the country’s highest per-capita debt. It’s all but hidden in the election.
['The Canadian Press']
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ST. JOHN’S — Business and taxpayer organizations are calling on party leaders in Newfoundland and Labrador to stop making costly election promises, as the province carries the country’s highest per-capita provincial debt.
Whoever forms government after the Oct. 14 election will inherit a net debt approaching $20 billion in a province about 545,000 people.
That debt will cost more than a billion dollars to service in the current fiscal year.
Liberal leader and incumbent premier John Hogan said he’d use money from a tentative energy deal with Quebec to pay down the province’s debt.
That’s almost $3 billion short of the net debt forecast this fiscal year — $19.7 billion by the end of March.