Hello,
In the 2015 election, the Liberals campaigned on giving the non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Office the power and responsibility to provide the cost of campaign promises.
“Starting with the next election, Canadians will have a credible, non-partisan way to compare each party’s fiscal plans,” the party’s 2015 platform read.
When in office, the Liberals followed through on the promise and enshrined it in legislation. All parties agreed to use the PBO’s services this time around.
The New Democrats promised today to provide dental care to uninsured Canadians whose households make less than $90,000 a year. The cost, according to the PBO: $560-million in the current fiscal year, rising to $856-million a year by the 2028-29 fiscal year.
The Conservatives promised yesterday to expand personal limits and government contributions for Registered Education Savings Plans. The cost, according to the PBO: $145-million a year starting in 2021-22, rising to $763-million a year in 2028-29.
The Liberals promised today to increase Old Age Security payments by 10 per cent for Canadians over the age of 75. The cost, according to the PBO: ...we don’t know.
Although the Liberals set up this process for the PBO to provide transparent, non-partisan campaign costing to Canadians, the party is not committing to running all of their own promises through it. For today’s announcement, they say their own estimates of the OAS increase put it at costing $1.63-billion a year in 2020-21. But not all promises have had costs associated, and – unlike their main rivals – they are not releasing the PBO’s independent assessments when they make their announcements.
When asked about when voters might see some – if not all – of the PBO’s costings of Liberal promises, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau demurred.
“We will be releasing a fully costed, fully responsible platform in the coming weeks, including all the work done by the Parliamentary Budget Officer on specific measures,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters.
This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Chris Hannay, with a report from Fredericton by Michelle Zilio. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.
DAILY TRACKING OF PUBLIC OPINION
- Conservatives: 37 per cent
- Liberals: 36 per cent
- NDP: 14 per cent
- Green: 7 per cent
- Bloc: 4 per cent
- People’s Party: 2 per cent
Analysis from Nik Nanos: “Tight race between Conservatives and Liberals continues. What is interesting is the support for the two front-runners is up while for the NDP and Greens it is sliding.”
The survey was conducted by Nanos Research and was sponsored by The Globe and Mail and CTV. 1,200 Canadians were surveyed between Sept. 15 and 17, 2019. The margin of error is 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Respondents were asked: “If a federal election were held today, could you please rank your top two current local voting preferences?” A report on the results, questions and methodology for this and all surveys can be found at https://tgam.ca/election-polls.
TODAY’S HEADLINES
Your lunch-time long read: a deep-dive by Robyn Doolittle and Greg MacArthur on Ontario Proud, and how the third-party group amassed its considerable cash.
Mr. Trudeau and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer have, so far, little in the way of help to offer Hong Kong Canadians concerned about the escalating violence in the nation’s pro-democracy protests. Both leaders say they are watching the situation with concern, but made no promises about what help Canada could offer.
Quebec Premier François Legault has released his list of demands from federal party leaders in the election. The response was mixed. The NDP said they were open to a French language test for immigrants to the province – but not a values test – and would also support extending provincial language laws to federally regulated companies like banks. Conservatives said they were open to discuss all the immigration proposals and would also allow the province to manage a single tax return for its residents. The Liberals would not say what they thought about Mr. Legault’s asks. None of the parties expressed a willingness to oppose the province’s ban on public servants wearing religious symbols, a law that is already the subject of a court challenge.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government-mandated gas-station stickers decrying the federal carbon tax are falling off gas pumps because of improper adhesive, but Mr. Ford says he’ll fix that.
Canadian household net worth fell for the first time since the financial crisis, according to a new study from Environics Analytics.
And the RCMP say they are still evaluating how bad an alleged leak was, days after they arrested one of their top intelligence officers and charged him with breaching the official secrets law. That alleged leak was discovered during a separate international police investigation of Vancouver businessman Vince Ramos, whose business was providing encrypted cellphones to drug dealers. Mr. Ramos pleaded guilty last year, but U.S. authorities are still working on seizing $80-million in assets he allegedly controlled.
Globe and Mail editorial board on the leaders’ debates: “The bottom line is that there are serious problems with the Leaders’ Debate Commission. It’s not the commission’s criteria; the question of who should be invited to a leaders’ debate is inherently subjective. The problem is that those criteria were unilaterally set by the Trudeau government. It’s not a great look.”
Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on oil and the economy: “The bottlenecks faced by Alberta in getting its oil to tidewater remain a major stumbling block to restoring investor confidence in the oil sands. But if anything can drive home the point of the need for a new pipeline to tidewater, it is the opportunity cost Canada now faces as other producers, including the United States, step up to replace Saudi oil in some markets.”
Jessica Scott-Reid (Maclean’s) on climate advocacy: “Mounting concern for both the treatment of animals on Canadian farms and the environmental harms caused by animal agriculture is fuelling an increase in activism and inspiring a merger of movements. Animal rights and climate activists are increasingly becoming one and the same.”
Catherine Ford (Calgary Herald) on plastic pollution: “With those exceptions in mind, why would anyone else drink bottled water? Worse, why would anyone buy bottled water when for the cost of a reusable container, what comes out of our taps is (relatively) free and non-polluting or polluted? I raise this because I am appalled at the attacks on Alberta’s oil and gas sector on environmental grounds when we are drowning and choking in unnecessary plastic. It will take years to evolve to renewable energy. It would take less than a day for each of us to stop buying bottled water.”
Just 34 days of the campaign to go...
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Chris Hannay