Liberal Platform Released

From the Globe and Mail:
"Stéphane Dion's Liberals unveiled a campaign platform with $54-billion in spending and tax cut commitments over four years and what the party says is an ironclad promise to keep budgets balanced."

If you say so.

The platform also contains a series of broken promises:
The party is promising to restore the 2005 Kelowna accord – scrapped by the Harper government – that gives natives more support, but have shrunk their commitment to $1.4-billion over four years from $5-billion over five years.

And

Their pledge to funding a national child care system will receive $1.5-billion over four years instead of $5-billion over five years as they'd promised in the 2006 election.

Stephane Dion promised to restore the accord, but has not.

On affordability:
The Liberal platform works out to about $4-billion per year in new spending and, by year four, about $10.5-billion in annual tax cuts for individuals and business. Another $4.4-billion per year would go in special tax breaks for low- and middle-income Canadians as well as rural and northern residents.

That is almost 20 billion in spending and tax cuts, I am not sure how they plan on keeping the budget balanced. They are playing fast and loose that is for sure. This is proven by the Liberal's using outdated growth projects. Growth projects they themselves have criticized.

Canada's economic growth projections have eroded since then, but the Liberals say they're sticking with these projections because the Harper government outlook for revenue remains the same for the current year. The governing Tories have not updated revenue projections yet for the three years after 2008-2009.

The Liberals also say that they will have cash to spare:
The Liberals say they'll even have cash to spare, with $13.3-billion extra in surpluses and rainy-day cushions over that period.

That means an average of 3.3 billion a year in surplus and raining day funds. Or as the Liberals call it March Madness. Of course if the Conservatives leave only that much as surplus then they are frittering away the fiscal capacity of Canada and skirting dangerously close to deficit.

Liberals propose program cuts as well:
The Liberals will help pay for their plan by cutting about $12-billion over four years from the federal government's $200-billion annual budget and shifting the funds to new priorities.

What will they cut? We need to know.

Most experts agree that their is not much left to cut, not without going after program spending anyway. All the easy cuts were made in the 90s.

Of course, the Dion plan also assumes their own Green Shift won't reduce GHG emissions, for if it does, they will run a deficit as their 15.5 billion in new tax revenues will not be in the government coffers.

So the question begs, why impose this tax at all if they don't think it will work?

We're better off with Harper.