The Star’s view
Mulcair’s bid for credibility
Few Canadians will be burning the midnight oil, fretting over New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair’s “fiscal plan.” Elections are largely about leadership and trust. They’re not fought and won by proving that your budget makes more sense at the margins than the other guy’s.
Still, Mulcair deserves credit for costing out the NDP spending promises — in however general terms — well before we go to the polls on Oct. 19. Never having held the reins of federal governance, the party is wisely trying to reassure the national electorate that it can be trusted with the piggy bank. And from a political perspective, at least, the general framework Mulcair rolled out on Wednesday does the job, thin though it was on details.
The NDP’s signature items include investing about $5.75 billion more next year in jobs and infrastructure, affordable daycare, aboriginal communities, health and seniors care, veterans and other priorities. Compared to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s ambitious, deficit-funded program, it’s a deliberately more cautious, pay-as-you-go agenda.
With an eye to balancing Ottawa’s nearly $300-billion budget, Mulcair plans to offset the costs by raising $7.2 billion next year by hiking the corporate tax rate, repealing income-splitting for families with kids, rolling back higher tax-free savings account allowances and other tax measures.
All this should leave Ottawa in surplus next year to the tune of about $4 billion, the NDP reckons.
Inevitably, this balancing act hangs on a few rosy assumptions, including healthier growth than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is forecasting, as well as higher oil prices. And some of the NDP’s numbers are fuzzy, at best.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and Trudeau will get their chance to pick apart the details as the leaders debate the economy on Thursday evening.
But when all is said and done, Mulcair’s bid for fiscal credibility deserves a pass. The program may not exactly fire up NDP true believers, but it is likely to survive the sniff test with voters who are giving the NDP a serious look, but who hesitate to hand them a blank cheque.
Whether Mulcair ultimately misses his surplus targets by a billion here or there when Ottawa is spending close to $300 billion a year doesn’t really matter, especially given that the Conservatives have run deficits for years and the Liberals propose to do the same for a few more years. But having made balancing the books a touchstone of his campaign, Mulcair has followed through.
There’s also no sign of the “austerity and cuts” that Trudeau has been suggesting would result from Mulcair’s budget-balancing act. Indeed, the focus now shifts to Trudeau and the Liberals, who have yet to fully cost out their own program with a similar document.
Trudeau has rolled out a signature programto invest an additional $60 billion in infrastructure over the next 10 years, divided roughly equally among public transit, social infrastructure including affordable housing, early learning and green infrastructure, including clean energy. The Liberals have also promised to invest billions in job creation for young people, income support for low-income seniors, better employment insurance and other priorities.
But rather than hike taxes to pay the full freight, as the New Democrat Party proposes to do, Trudeau is prepared to run a deficit of up to $10 billion for the next three years, hoping to grow the economy back into surplus down the road.
While the Liberals say they have already announced their broad “fiscal framework,” the public will be looking for more detail well before we go to the polls. The party promises a “comprehensive, complete” document and it should be unveiled soon.
As untested as the NDP is at the federal level, Trudeau is also an untested quantity. Canadians now have two credible, progressive alternatives to the current government. The Liberals cannot afford to have a credibility gap opening up in the campaign’s final weeks.
Thomas Mulcair deserves credit for costing out NDP promises