I believe in the end that Harper actually decreased it, from 34% to 31%. Trudeau is set to decrease that further to 30% in his first term. The deficits after this year (the sub $15B ones) are really a non issue.
Harper inherited 31.5% and left with 31.0%. The other problem is he also inherited a massive budget surplus that brought it down to 28.1% before he started jacking it up again.