The front page of Tom Mulcair’s financial plan.
Just imagine, Tom Mulcair, can put his entire election platform and the budget of Canada in just 3 pages. Are you frightened yet? You should be.
He claimed during the Globe & Mail debate it was 7 pages, that was bad enough, however, he was counting the cover, a nice letter from friendly Tom Mulcair, a single page of fiscal framework, a nice colourful graph that means little, It goes on with some vague promises, some vague claims about how he is going to raise money. Just imagine, he can tell you how he is going to finance the Government of Canada in just 10 paragraphs. Then there is a balance sheet, finally, well sort of. then a bar graph, then some quotes from “financial experts” some of who are already pulling back from the way they have been characterized.Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has called it “Swiss cheese” because it is so full of holes.
Veteran political reporters such as Chantal Hebert from the Toronto Star, has been quoted as quipping “This isn’t the Red Book, it’s a back page of the Red Book,”. One of the gaps that I noticed was under the title of “Safe and Secure Canada”, in the “Notes” section this is described as “Safe and Secure Canada includes funding for veterans support, security and policing, and foreign affairs, among other measures” That’s it, that’s all our Safety and Security is worth, now how much they plan to spend in this area is even more interesting. The total budget increase proposed by the NDP is $1.377 billion, however, Tom Mulcair has already committed $454 million for improvement of Veterans services that represents almost 32% of his total budget increase for Safety and Security.
If you have tried to find a copy on line don’t feel bad if you can’t, it seems the NDP doesn’t want you to know what it says, Tom just says “trust me” Sorry Tom, I thought you believed the voters had a right to know, oh right that was a year ago, then you changed your mind about what Canadian voters should know about you and the NDP.. The NDP won’t even put the plan on their web site. Of course after what The Hill Times had to say about it, I’m not surprised. However, here you can read it here in PDF and decide for yourself.