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Trudeau presents election platform

Big ticket items include students, climate; Tories, NDP says numbers don’t work

Thestar.com
Oct. 5, 2015
By Tonda MacCharles

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau released his party’s full election platform Monday at the same time the Conservative government announced it had signed the biggest free trade deal the country has ever reached.

Asked how the Liberals expect to compete electorally with such a significant economic achievement by the Conservatives, Trudeau waved his 88-page platform document as the answer.

It’s a document that reprises the Liberals’ big-ticket items: tax cuts for the middle class and a doubling of infrastructure spending over the next four years. It also confirms the party’s readiness to run deficits of up to $10 billion a year in the first half of a mandate.

The platform Trudeau held up to cameras laid out new spending he hadn’t announced to date, including:

A reinstatement of the $5-million Court Challenges Program to aid groups challenging the constitutionality of federal law;

About $260 million in new support for the agricultural sector.

It pulls together Liberal positions that have gotten little attention in the campaign, including a promise that international aid money for maternal, newborn and child health programming would “cover the full range of reproductive health services” including abortion counselling and services that the Conservatives refused to pay for.

It also says Trudeau would amend anti-terror powers that Bill C-51 gave CSIS and CSE, by narrowing what the activities they may legally engage in under warrant, and establish parliamentary oversight of security agencies.

Trudeau’s bid to counter the Trans-Pacific Partnership news saw him adopt a go-slow approach to the trade pact, which he acknowledged was “a very big deal.” The Liberal leader said he would reserve judgment until he’d read the text and heard from Canadian workers in the manufacturing, automotive and dairy sectors. He promised a Liberal government would not ratify the agreement until it has a full debate in Parliament, but he signalled the Liberal party is “resolutely pro-trade.”

The Conservatives and NDP attacked Trudeau after the platform release, each of which said his numbers don’t add up. The NDP claimed the Liberal plan would lead to significant cuts in health programming, and the Conservatives said Trudeau will have to pay for his program through “payroll taxes, taxes on families, taxes on personal savings, as well as $6.5B in additional, yet-to-be-named tax hikes.”

However, on the heels of a huge Liberal rally in Brampton Sunday night, and a national poll suggesting the Liberals had edged ahead of the Conservatives in voter preference, Trudeau was buoyed. He strode back and forth across a stage in Waterloo as he took Facebook questions, media questions, and consistently referred back to his plan for economic growth.

Entitled, “A new plan for a strong middle class,” the document showcases the enhanced tax-free child benefit and proposed tax cut for middle-income earners. They are to be financed through a parallel tax hike on top earners, cancellation of the universal child benefit the Harper government sends out in monthly cheques, and the cancellation of income splitting - a Conservative tax measure that helps households with one high-earning spouse that allows the top-earner to transfer income to low-earner for tax purposes, and thereby pay income tax at a lower rate.

In contrast to an earlier costing document, the new platform revised upward revenue projections by almost $1 billion and revised upward its spending or “investment” plans by a bit more than that. In total, the Liberal plan calls for $149.8 billion in new spending over the next four years, up from $146 billion announced Sept. 26. That includes health spending that Trudeau announced in the interim, which would mean an extra $1 billion a year by 2019-20. It also includes the new aid for post-secondary students.

However, the Liberal document released Monday did not revise its deficit projections, except for a very slight adjustment for more red ink in the first year. Trudeau says he will run deficits for the first two years of nearly $10 billion. In the third year, that drops to a $5.7-billion deficit. By the last year of a mandate, the Liberals say they would be able to balance the budget with a slight surplus of $1 billion.

Liberal party officials on background explained Monday’s revisions were “a more fleshed-out accounting of how we arrived at the same bottom line.” The party says it would eventually achieve a surplus through economic growth and increased government revenues but would also find nearly $3 billion in savings - a promise the New Democrats mocked.

Trudeau shrugged off the criticism Monday, saying it amounts to finding “efficiencies” equal to one per cent of the nearly $300-billon federal spending envelope.

Trudeau unveiled the latest document at an event at Wilfrid Laurier University and focused on his new promise to provide more direct help to post-secondary students from low- and middle-income families to ensure that debt loads are manageable.

He would increase the maximum Canada Student Grant for low-income students to $3,000 per year for full-time students, and to $1,800 per year for part-time students. The Liberals would also increase the income thresholds for eligibility, giving more Canadian students access to larger grants. The party claims this promise would increase the level of non-repayable grant assistance to students by $750 million per year, rising to $900 million per year by 2019-20.

The platform says this would be funded by “cancelling the poorly targeted education and textbook tax credits” - worth $725 million next year, rising to $925 million by year four. The tuition tax credit will be maintained.