Liberals Ready To Rip Into Harper Government’s Mid-Year Economic Report
Posted October 18, 2010 7:01 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The federal Liberals are readying to rip apart the Harper government’s mid-year economic report as they tout their own family care proposals.
Deputy Liberal Leader Ralph Goodale, who will be speaking in Ottawa Monday, said the party will be having a “serious, meaningful discussion” about the Harper government’s spending.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has announced that Ottawa posted the biggest deficit in history last year at $55.6 billion. That was $1.8 billion more than anticipated and about $13 billion more than the previous high in 1993-94.
“We’ll try to offer a sensible, rational, dispassionate view of the facts, the international context in which Canada must find its way, and where the policy choices are domestically,” Goodale said in an interview Sunday.
The Liberal response to Tory fiscal policies will feature three simultaneous speeches in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, titled “Hope for Families and Leadership for Canada’s Future: What the Finance Minister Should Have Said.”
“There needs to be a different agenda and we will go a little ways at least in describing the things that should be on that agenda,” said Goodale, who wouldn’t reveal what exactly the Liberals plan to do to reduce the deficit.
The Finance Department said the record deficit is mostly due to a one-time cost of $5.6 billion for transitional assistance to Ontario and British Columbia to change to a harmonized sales tax this year. Had the adjustment not happened, the deficit would have come in under estimates.
Goodale said the money to the provinces was something the government was legally bound to spending, but he said the report still contained some “gross manipulation” of numbers.
“The one consistent fact about Flaherty’s projections is that they’ve always been wrong,” said Goodale, adding that the government has been moving certain expenditures from one fiscal year to another.
While unveiling the government’s mid-year report card last week Flaherty also warned that the economic outlook was so uncertain he was building in a risk margin worth about $1.5 billion this year and next — totalling about $6 billion over the next five years — to his working assumptions.
Goodale said the Liberals would also have budgeted in a prudence factor, but not in the way Flaherty has.
“He’s put in prudence backwards,” said Goodale, explaining that Flaherty shouldn’t have put the biggest financial cushion in the early years.
“Why would he do that? Because he’ll be scrounging for cash in 2015 and he doesn’t want to tie it up in a prudence factor.”
The Liberals will also question the government’s priorities by analyzing the issue of planned tax cuts for large corporations. Goodale said large Canadian corporations need competitive rates but already enjoy one of the lowest tax rates in the G7.
“You make tax cuts when they are affordable, when they are sustainable and you don’t have to borrow money in order to pay for them,” he said.
As they highlight the Harper government spending billions on fighter jets, prisons and tax breaks for large corporations, the Liberals also plan to provide more details on their family-focused initiatives that will build on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s $1-billion family-care plan.
“We’ll be pointing the direction of some other proposals we have in mind. They will be aimed at relieving some of this huge pressure on average middle class families,” said Goodale.
The Conservatives said Sunday that the Liberals should explain how they plan to pay for their spending commitments over the past year.
“We’re in the best position in the entire G7 according to the IMF and OECD, Canada has created over 420,000 net new jobs since July 2009. That doesn’t happen by accident,” Chisholm Pothier, Flaherty’s director of communication, said in an email Sunday.
Liberal Finance critic Scott Brison and Industry critic Marc Garneau will be delivering speeches similar to Goodale’s on Monday, while Ignatieff holds another one of his “Open Mike” sessions with the public.
