When the final accounting is done, federal debt is likely to be about $550 billion higher because of pandemic-related lockdowns in Canada and other countries. Most of the current discussion around the additional debt focusses on its sustainability – whether the debt can be rolled over indefinitely without requiring tax increases or spending cuts to finance the interest expense. As long as the government’s borrowing costs grow no faster than current dollar output, the additional debt will not put pressure on federal finances. The historical record suggests such fiscal sustainability is possible, albeit far from guaranteed. The economic cost of the debt gets much less attention in the policy discussions. There is an implicit assumption that if the debt is fiscally sustainable, it can be rolled over indefinitely without imposing any economic costs. If that were true, the economic lockdown would reduce output, but nobody would need to suffer an income loss, now or in the future. However, the analysis in this paper indicates that the income loss arising from the recession can only be deferred, not eliminated, by issuing debt. How far into the future should this loss be shifted? It is hard to make a convincing case that the benefits of stabilizing the economy extend beyond Canadians alive today. Fairness requires that the lockdown-induced increase in debt be retired before the next generation starts working and paying taxes, which will occur 18 to 25 years from now. A second fairness issue is how the recession-induced output loss should be shared among the current generation. The government should implement a set of debt reduction policies that, given the distribution of income losses during the recession, achieves what is considered a fair sharing of the burden of the recession. Every effort should be made to minimize the efficiency cost of achieving the two fairness goals. Since they harm rather than help long-run economic performance, elimination of business subsidies that do not address a clearly defined market failure should be the centerpiece of debt repayment policies. Spending reductions that promote a fairer distribution of the economic cost of the recession without harming economic efficiency should also be considered. If revenue-raising measures are necessary, tax increases on business investment should be avoided. Faced with a tax increase in Canada, investors can, to a close approximation, maintain their existing rate of return by shifting investment out of Canada to other countries. The smaller capital stock in Canada results in lower productivity and hence lower wages. In a small economy like Canada, the corporate income tax is effectively a tax on wages but is much more damaging than increases in personal income taxes or the GST, because it causes a fall in wages. Paying down the debt fairly and efficiently raises complex technical issues and value judgements that should be debated publicly. To help guide the way, the government should set up a Parliamentary Committee to consult with Canadians on who should pay for the economic lockdown and, with the assistance of an expert panel, to develop a proposal for achieving the target outcome in the most efficient way