In a post yesterday at Tilting at Windmills in which he took a scalpel to the recently released Conservative platform, Ian Welsh wrote:
As usual the sycophantic pro-corporate Conference Board of Canada has fallen down on the job by certifying this crap as leading to a balanced budget.
Maybe somebody heard him.
A prominent economist commissioned by the Conservatives to assess the financial soundness of their election platform says major items were omitted from the version he was given.Paul Darby, deputy chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada, originally concluded that Stephen Harper's Conservative platform "is affordable in each fiscal year from 2005-2006 through 2010-2011."
The Conservative party promoted that conclusion last week as evidence its election platform had been "independently verified" by the Conference Board, an Ottawa-based think-tank.
But Darby says the version of the platform he was given to vet didn't include a Conservative party health-care guarantee which states patients will be transported to another jurisdiction if they can't get timely care at home.
It also omitted a Tory platform promise to redress the so-called "fiscal imbalance" between Ottawa and the provinces.
Darby wouldn't comment on whether the timely health-care guarantee would bear a significant cost.
"Talk to Harper," he said. "It is not in the platform I received from them."
So the Conference Board is hereby off the hook. Cute.
And I would highly recommend Ian's post.
I've heard a few rumors that the Parliamentary Budget Authority that the Conservatives wish to create (something similar to the Congressional Budget Office in the US) will be headed by Paul Darby.
I wonder if Darby just blew that chance.
It should be noted that the Liberals refused to allow the Conference Board to cost their "platform". In fact the Liberals have yet to have their platform independently costed by a non-partisan firm. I guess since they are still announcing multi-billion dollar projects with one week to go it wouldn't make sense. Now where is that Liberal "platform", I want to go read it. Or should I wait for the final version.
The Liberals have a track record. They will underestimate revenue and use it to pay down debts and make "surprise" pork announcements. We know this.
As for the Conference board's costing, while I said some nice things about Darby in a followup post, I don't trust any costing if they won't release the costing, not just some letter saying "it's fine, really." All that is, is an attempt to replace the Conservatives lack of credibility with the credibility of someone else.
Give me the numbers you used.
That goes for all parties. Show me your numbers.
That said, might not cost Darby the job. Since he just showed some independence, if Harper wants to make a point, appointing him would be smart politics. Might bite them in the butt later down the road, but that often happens anyway when you appoint people to independent spots where you have no power over them any more.
Harper hasn't spent a lot of time talking about the things I consider most objectionable in the platform. In fact he mostly hasn't talked about them. Since I expected them, until the platform came out I was constantlly slagging him because I figured he had a hidden agenda.
But he doesn't. They are there in the platform, and he will be able to say "look, it was in the platform" to anyone who objects.
Harper's a smart cookie. He knows the media is unlikely to seize on some of the stuff in a platform released with one and half weeks to go till voting day.
But it's all there. He hasn't moved more than a few inches to the center, what he's done is talked about mostly the centrist proposals and not talked about the right wing rewrite of the constituion and gutting of the federal government. And the media has repeated it.
And in anticipation of the inevitable question:
Costing of the NDP's commitments (PDF!)
Note: I haven't examined it closely myself yet. I think all the parties were way too slow to get their platforms out this time around. But at least the NDP has provided numbers we can examine.
What. A. Shock.
The CPC misleading Canadians about an important issue? Wow, what a shock, it is not like they have not done this before on other issues (Grewal, Dingwall expense accounts, etc). That they would do this on economic numbers though is particularly worrisome. They keep going on and on about how the Liberals always underestimate the surplus and make it out to be a great evil that this is done. Yet I find myself much happier with the premise of underestimating the surplus as opposed to the previous tradition of both previous Conservative and Liberal governments, which was to underestimate the size of the deficit.
There is this persistent belief among Conservatives that the surplus is somehow an evil thing, that it means Canadians are being overtaxed and ripped off by their government. Yet the Conservatives seem to forget the half trillion dollar debt Canada has to still pay off, and that surpluses allow us to do so, which in turn increases fiscal health and indeed flexibility in times of troubles. I thought the Conservatives were being overly optimistic in their assumptions before this revision by the Conference Board of Canada, now I think they are pulling a scam pure and simple, using the argument that it is "fear and smear" by opponents when they are challenged on this topic.
Indeed, that appears to be the standard response to any questioning of the CPC, it's leader's massive road to Damascus transformation in this election cycle, and the policies it has suddenly embraced. In other words a continuation of the stealth campaign the CPC has unfortunately been running very successfully so far.