Inside Tory promises add up to more than $100 billion over 10 years, Star analysis finds,
Large 10-year price tag is change from previous Conservative campaigns
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OTTAWA—The Conservatives plan to spend more than $100 billion over the next decade while maintaining they can balance the federal books without cuts, a Star analysis has found.
Direct spending promises in the Conservative platform total $103.6 billion over the next 10 years, excluding tax measures and other promises without price tags.
The Conservative campaign has resisted calls to release details on their platform’s costing. Instead, they’re relying on the independent Parliamentary Budget Office to cost their promises, and have promised to release an updated version of their platform when that analysis is complete.
“We will be releasing our costed platform shortly, once we receive the costing from the PBO,” said Chelsea Tucker, a spokesperson for the Conservative campaign, when presented with the Star’s analysis Monday.
“As Mr. O’Toole has said, with Canada’s Recovery Plan we will get our economy back on track, get Canadians back to work, and encourage growth, while balancing the budget over the next decade.”
That job of balancing the books — without cuts — is made more difficult by the new spending promises in the Conservative platform, released in the early days of the federal election campaign.
The lion’s share of new spending comes from Erin O’Toole’s pledge to boost health transfers over the next 10 years — something his party estimated will result in $60 billion more flowing to the provinces over that period.
But the Conservatives are also promising big boosts to innovation spending ($5 billion), “natural” climate change mitigation measures ($3 billion) and upgrading long-term care homes ($3 billion).
O’Toole and the Conservatives maintain they can balance the budget over the next 10 years without cuts — banking on economic growth and the winding-down of pandemic emergency spending to put Ottawa back in black.
Whether that is technically possible — and, of course, barring any future financial crisis — it’s a change in tone from the Conservatives, who have traditionally been big on balanced budgets.
“This is not something new for the Liberals because Justin Trudeau has been saying the same thing since 2015 … (when) he ran to the left of (former NDP leader Thomas) Mulcair on budget and fiscal policy,” said Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, in an interview with the Star last week.
“The Conservatives, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic, have adopted a similar strategy … All this talk about the importance of balancing the budget, which was so central in Canadian politics in the 1980s, 1990s has really vanished.”
If elections are no time to discuss serious issues, that’s doubly true for discussing fiscal restraint. Parties don’t typically highlight all the things they would take away from Canadians who vote for them.
But the 2021 campaign is unique among recent elections in that no party is preaching the importance of balancing the books in the short- to mediumterm.
The Liberals’ platform, released last week, projects a deficit of $157 billion in 2021-22, declining to $32 billion in 202526. The debt-to-GDP ratio, the Liberals’ preferred “fiscal anchor,” would decline from 48.5 per cent this year to 46.5 per cent in 2025-26.
Those figures include $78 billion in proposed new spending from their platform commitments alone.
O’Toole maintained last week that his party will be able to balance the books over the next decade, without cutting services. His plan relies instead on economic growth, allowing the budget to balance itself — an idea the Conservatives used to mock Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau for suggesting.
“Our plan is a balanced one to get our budget back to balance over the course of 10 years by controlling spending but making sure up front that we help the country get back on its feet,” O’Toole said at a media availability last week.
Béland told the Star that the Conservatives can afford to take this tack — to the dismay of fiscal hawks within their own party — because in this election, voters don’t have a mainstream party preaching the importance of more restraint.
“The (political) centre has moved to the left, and the parties are adjusting accordingly,” Béland said.
“Who will people who are fiscally conservative turn to?”