Mulcair’s platform continues to unravel

October 10, 2015

OTTAWA – The NDP platform reveals faulty costing numbers, and contains billions in uncosted promises.

 After former Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page called Mulcair’s fiscal plan “Swiss-cheese”, the NDP was forced to update its numbers. Despite saying “I’m very proud of the numbers we put forward” just weeks ago, Mulcair has now abandoned his faulty costing numbers and decreased his budget projections by billions of dollars – due to his bad math.

 On top of this, Mulcair has miscalculated the cost of his commitment to establish a uniform 360-hour qualifying period for Employment Insurance, eliminating differences for regions and “new entrants and re-entrants.” (NDP media backgrounder, September 22, 2015)

 By only setting aside $1.2 billion for this promise, Mulcair is ignoring the Parliamentary Budget Officer report which estimates it will actually cost $2.2 billion. (PBO Report, October 18, 2010)

 Despite promising to introduce a “universal drug plan,” Mulcair’s contribution to his proposed Canada-wide program would be limited to $1.55 billion. This means that Mulcair is expecting provinces to pay for over 80 percent of the costs of his program, since Quebec’s pharmacare program – the only one of its kind in Canada – costs the province $2.5 billion a year to cover 40 percent of the population. (La Presse, June 30, 2015)

 That leaves billions in empty promises to be paid for through cuts or downloading to the provinces and territories.

 Canadians have a clear choice in this election between the Liberal Party’s plan for smart investments that create jobs and growth, or cuts and broken promises by the NDP that will cost jobs and weaken our economy further.