Liberal platform claims big promises fully costed, tax cuts and surpluses too
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OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Stephane Dion moved to shore up one exposed flank Monday by releasing a fully costed party platform he claims removes the prospect of budgetary deficits under a Grit government.
But even as the Liberals were refuting Conservative charges that they'll spend Canada back into the red or tax it into recession, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was hammering away at another quarter by accusing the Liberals of being soft on crime.
The twin Conservative themes - reckless Liberal spending combined with lax criminal justice - don't necessarily square with the last decade of surplus Liberal budgets, slowly reduced taxation and falling Canadian crime rates. But they appear to have left Dion on the defensive, nonetheless.
"A Liberal government will never put Canada into deficit. Period," Dion said at a news conference in Ottawa where he was joined by a half dozen high-profile Liberal candidates.
"We will build a richer Canada by cutting taxes for all Canadian families and businesses, making them more competitive."
While Dion was hammering out a full platform Monday, NDP Leader Jack Layton was musing about coalition building.
Layton told a national news agency that he'd be open to working with other parties - provided he sits in the catbird seat after Oct. 14.
"I think what I'll do is hopefully sit down in the Prime Minister's Office and pull together the leadership of my party and say: 'How can we best serve the country? How can we best get that child-care program we committed to? How can we best get those doctors and nurses trained and deal with these wait times?"'
But it is exactly those kinds of expensive national commitments that have the Tories knee-capping Dion.
The Liberals have faced scathing criticism from the Harper Conservatives for a spate of election promises that amount to billions of dollars in new spending annually.
Public opinion polls suggest the Tory critique is taking its toll, as Liberal fortunes appear generally stalled across a wide spectrum of otherwise conflicting surveys that show the Conservatives ahead by anywhere from five to 15 points.
By becoming the first major party leader to release his full election platform - the Greens released theirs last week - Dion endeavoured to give his party a bounce and restore some lustre to the proposed "Green Shift" at the Liberal campaign's centre.
Dion said the carbon tax scheme would cost the federal treasury just $90 million in lost revenue over four years.
And every penny of the $40 billion raised in new carbon taxes would be returned to Canadians in tax breaks, said Dion.
Dion said the Green Shift will cut income taxes, put a price on pollution, fight poverty and position Canada to be a leader in the 21st-century global economy.
Among the platform highlights:
-Cut the bottom income-tax rate to 13.5 per cent from 15, and lop one percentage point off the two middle rates.
-Lower the small business tax rate to 10 per cent from 11 per cent.
-Lower the corporate tax rate to 14 per cent by 2013.
-$10,000 in refundable tax benefits to Canadian families for investments in energy-saving home retrofits.
-Simplify the tax system for post-secondary students, providing most students about $1000 a year.
-A new $350 refundable child tax credit.
-Create a new Guaranteed Family Supplement for the poorest families with children, worth $1,225 a year more per family.
-Increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors by $600 a year for low-income seniors.
The Liberals say they'll do all this while running $3 billion-plus annual surpluses.
They'll also reverse a Tory decision to heavily tax income trusts, and promised to shave $12 billion from federal spending over four years to help pay for new investments.
By late afternoon, the Conservatives were plowing into Dion's Liberal blueprint.
"His plan does not add up. It by no means is revenue neutral, and taxpayers would be stuck with deficit spending, higher taxes or, worse yet, both," Environment Minister John Baird said in Ottawa.
"There are $39 billion in promises that either are entirely missing or that have been under-costed. If he actually fulfilled all of the promises that he's made he would plunge the country back into deficit, running up over $50 billion in new debt over the next four years."
The prime minister, meanwhile, had already gone on the offensive on another tack.
Harper introduced his party's tough new criminal justice proposals, which include maximum life sentences for first-and second-degree murder and 14-year sentences for youths aged 14 and older who violent crimes.
Harper said the Liberals have obstructed Tory crime legislation for the last 30 months, a contention not borne out by a close examination of the record but one which the Conservatives repeat at every opportunity.
"The Opposition, we know they're opposed to them all," the prime minister said in Ottawa.
"But they won't come out and say it. They will claim they're for it and then try and stop it. That's where we ultimately have the hammer of public opinion to deal with them."
Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe responded that Harper is simply copying U.S. President George W. Bush's form of government with "more weapons and prisons."
Duceppe said Harper's promise to bring in tougher measures to deal with young criminal offenders perfectly illustrates what he called the Tory leader's repressive tendencies.
The release of the full Liberal platform provides both a fat target for critics and some much-needed information for voters.
NDP Leader Jack Layton slammed the Liberal blueprint as nonsense.
"To come in and propose a deeper corporate tax cut for big corporate companies that even Mr. Harper is proposing, and then to put aside another tax shelter with those trusts, and then to bring on a tax on families and propose all kinds of programs - I don't see how those figures can add up," he said.
"It doesn't make sense."
The New Democrats have not yet released their platform but spokesman Karl Belanger said Monday it will be made public as early as next Sunday, prior to the leader debates that begin Oct. 1.
"That way (the information) can be used before and during the debate," said Belanger.
The Conservatives declined even to hint when the full Tory platform might be imparted to voters.
"All I can tell you is that it'll be out at an appropriate time," said a party official.
Might even cut back on unemployment figures.
