If the Lantz government wants advice on its debt, here’s some for free: Stop borrowing and start paying it back.

Instead, the government launched the Debt and Risk Advisory Committee last week. Four financial experts will spend the next two years reviewing borrowing strategies, setting risk parameters and recommending investment policies for the deputy minister of finance.

Notice what’s missing? Any plan to pay down the debt.

The committee claims to be the “final piece” of the government’s debt management strategy and sets two targets: Keep net debt below 40 per cent of GDP and keep interest costs below 7.5 per cent of revenue.

Those targets are a trap.

A debt-to-GDP target isn’t a plan to pay off debt. It’s permission to keep piling it on. If the economy grows at all, the government can borrow hundreds of millions more every year and still hit its target. The ratio holds steady while the bill for taxpayers climbs.

The problem is taxpayers don’t pay interest with ratios. They pay with real dollars taken off their paycheques.

A family with a maxed-out credit card can’t tell the bank everything is fine because the neighbours got raises. Taxpayers should demand the same from their government.

The numbers show why.

The Lantz government is borrowing $410 million this year, pushing the province’s debt up nearly 20 per cent in a single year, with another $1.3 billion in new debt planned over three years.

Interest charges will take $201 million from taxpayers this year. That’s about $1,100 for every Islander, gone before a single road is paved or a single nurse is hired.

And Islanders don’t have to take my word for it. The government’s own watchdog has been ringing this bell for years.

Auditor General Darren Noonan warned in his latest report on long-term fiscal sustainability that the net debt could grow another 58 per cent by 2031 to reach $4.8 billion. It also notes the Parliamentary Budget Officer rates P.E.I.’s finances as unsustainable.

“Escalating net debt puts a tremendous burden on future generations, and increases in interest costs associated with rising debt levels will take money away from programs and services that benefit Islanders,” Noonan wrote in his report.

Noonan says he’s “not here to scare people,” but he keeps raising the alarm about historic debt levels because the Lantz government keeps ignoring him.

The auditor general has told the Lantz government it needs a real plan.

Instead, Premier Rob Lantz’s answer is a committee to fine-tune its borrowing.

But Islanders don’t need more consultation. They need action. And the Lantz government doesn’t need two years of advice to know what the right measuring sticks are.

Here are three it could adopt today.

First, net debt in dollars, falling every year. Not a ratio. A number that goes down.

Second, annual borrowing should be zero. Balance the budget and make it the law, so the next government can’t max out the credit card all over again.

Third, interest costs per Islander, shrinking every budget. Every dollar not sent to bond holders is a dollar for hospitals, roads or tax relief.

Hitting those targets means making choices the Lantz government has dodged.

This includes conducting a full review of all spending to identify more savings. Other places have done it and P.E.I. can too.

In fact, when the federal government faced similar debt issues in the 1990s, former prime minister Jean Chrétien launched a sweeping program review to determine which spending was truly necessary. That review led to $9.8 billion in savings, which was nearly 19 per cent of total program spending at the time.

Islanders deserve the same kind of scrutiny over how their tax dollars are being spent.

The committee’s first report to the minister should contain one number above all others: the year P.E.I.’s debt hits zero. Anything less is a red herring wrapped in a ratio.