The NDP, Saskatchewan Party and Liberals have each released their party’s election platforms and one thing is clear – voters have three very different plans from which to choose.
This isn’t one of those elections where someone can sit back and try to excuse not voting by saying “all the parties are the same.”
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) went through each party’s platform and took a look at how much of your money each party wants to spend and calculated stark differences between the platforms (full details available at SpendingTracker.ca.)
On top of existing government programs, the NDP have promised to spend another $2.6 billion over the next four years. They want to spend more of your money on health care, education, child care, support for seniors, housing, infrastructure, the environment and seemingly everything else.
The NDP apparently thinks every government service needs tons more of your money thrown at it.
On top of the $2.6 billion in new spending, the NDP have also promised several tax credits and rebates along with phasing out the small business tax. The latter certainly would be a good move as it would help small businesses stay competitive with Manitoba; which eliminated its small business tax this year.
What wasn’t costed in the NDP’s platform was their commitment to share resource revenues with aboriginal reserves or the additional cost to ratepayers for building more wind power rather than natural gas power plants. Both promises certainly aren’t cheap. In fact, according to one report out of the U.S., wind power costs ratepayers about 54 per cent more than natural gas.
The NDP plan to pay for some of their commitments by hiking the fees companies pay to extract and sell resources such as potash. The big problem with that, of course, is that when you set-up a framework that attracts multi-billion dollar investments, and then decide to change it on investors after the fact, it scares the you-know-what out of those looking at making future investments in the province. Who knows what financial damage that would cause?
As for the Sask Party, they’ve committed $355 million in new spending over the next four years. More money for hockey rinks, funding for universities and fixing up provincial parks are just a few examples from their platform.
The best part of their plan though is the relatively modest total price tag; leaving plenty of financial flexibility to cope with a drop in resource prices, room to weather a possible recession or reduce taxes. The latter is one area where the Sask Party has already delivered great results.
The Liberals have proposed to shoot for a whopping $3.4 billion in cuts. That’s right, not additional spending, but reductions in the size and cost of government. You see, in year one, they would push for a 10 per cent reduction in government spending. Once you multiply that savings by four years and subtract their new spending commitments, they’re left with $3.4 billion in savings; which they would use to pay off the debt. Interest cost savings would be used to reduce the PST from 5 per cent to 3 per cent.
The Liberals’ zest for finding efficiencies in government is to be commended. However, they’re only running nine candidates so unless the NDP or Sask Party see something they like, you probably won’t see the Liberal platform implemented.
So there you have it, each of the three parties clearly aren't 'all the same.' All you have to do is decide the one you like the most.
Colin Craig is the Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
