Liberals attack on eve of debate
Tories would run up $12.4B deficit: Martin
Mark Kennedy and Mike Blanchfield, CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, January 09, 2006
The two major contenders in the Jan. 23 election traded blows Sunday, with Paul Martin's Liberals attacking Stephen Harper's fiscal credibility, while the Tory party demanded the ethics commissioner investigate allegations of a leak prior to Ralph Goodale's income trust announcement.
Martin's campaign said the Conservative leader would run up a deficit of at least $12.4 billion over five years if elected in two weeks.
That figure came from what the Grits said was a detailed analysis of the Conservatives' campaign spending promises. According to the projections, the effects of Harper's platform -- in both tax cuts and new expenditures -- would cumulatively outstrip government revenues by $12.4 billion by 2010-11. The Liberals also said the cumulative deficit could be much higher -- as high as $23.4 billion to $52.4 billion over five years.
The Conservatives countered that Martin's criticism of Tory spending plans is nothing more than a blatant attempt to divert public attention from his scandal-plagued government.
Tory finance critic Monte Solberg also launched a counteroffensive, calling for a third investigation into the income trust affair, this time from the much-maligned federal ethics commissioner, Bernard Shapiro.
"Paul Martin can try and attack us to divert away from the income trust scandal and the sponsorship scandal and the Options Canada scandal," Solberg said.
The Conservatives released a letter, dated Dec. 22, from Paul Darby, the deputy chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada, in which he said the Conservative platform "is affordable" from now to 2011, and would allow for $3 billion a year in debt to be paid down.
On the eve of the potentially defining leaders' debates, the latest opinion poll puts the Conservatives in front of the Liberals 34-32, with 17 per cent of Canadians indicating they are undecided about who to support.
The CPAC-SES nightly tracking poll of 1,200 Canadians, done Jan. 5 to 7, gives the NDP 17 per cent support, the Bloc 11 and the Green party six.
It has a margin of error of 2.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
The poll also confirms other surveys that show Tory support in Quebec on the rise at 17 per cent, although still trailing the Liberals (22) and far behind the Bloc Quebecois (48).
In the rest of Canada, the Conservatives hold a three percentage point lead over the Liberals (39-36). The NDP are at 19 per cent and the Green party at six per cent.
In the question of who would make the best prime minister, Harper held a two percentage point lead over Martin (27-25). The Tory leader's number was up six points, while Martin's support had fallen four points.
On the campaign trail, Martin targeted Harper as someone who would put the country's fiscal health and economic progress in jeopardy.
"I can tell you that a government which would willingly go back into deficit is a government willing to sacrifice, essentially, the tremendous growth that we have seen in our economy," Martin told reporters.
"As somebody who was the minister of finance for a long time, and somebody who became the minister of finance when we were deep in deficit, and somebody who essentially watched the evolution of us out of deficit and watched the strengthening of the Canadian economy, that there is a very clear relationship between the two."
The Liberals said the Tories' plan -- even without any action on addressing the federal-provincial fiscal imbalance -- would lead to a deficit in each of the next five years. They said the deficits would be as follows: 2006-07 - $1.9 billion; 2007-08 - $800 million; 2008-09 - $2.5 billion; 2009-10 - $2.1 billion and 2010-11 - $5.1 billion.
The Liberal offensive comes at a critical point in the campaign. With two weeks left in the race, the four party leaders are in Montreal for nationally televised debates tonight and Tuesday night.
While the Liberals and Tories were hammering each other, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe was voicing concerns about the activities of Option Canada, the organization that received $4.8 million in federal money on the eve of the 1995 referendum.
Reading to Bloc supporters from the letters patent, creating Option Canada on Sept. 11, 1995, Duceppe noted its mission was to promote Canadian unity "through all means legal, political and other."
He said that seemed to suggest "other than legal or political."
Duceppe hopes to get some answers today with the publication of Les Secrets d'Option Canada, a book said to be based on missing Option Canada documents.
Duceppe, who made no mention of Harper, plans to read parts of it before the televised leaders' debate in English tonight so he can use it as ammunition against Martin.
Martin suggested Sunday that if the Tories take power, they would actually force taxpayers to give back any income tax cuts they got from the Liberals in the recent mini-budget.
"It defies common sense that not only would a government cancel a tax cut to working-class families, to working-income families, but that a government would say to those families that 'We want you to cut a cheque to us, we want you to write a cheque to the government of Canada to pay us back for the tax cuts that you have got, that you have already received.' I've got to say something -- that goes beyond any breach of common sense."
Solberg dismissed the Liberal attack as scare tactics, predicting voters would not be fooled again the way they were in the final days of the 2004 election when the Liberals were able to vilify Harper.
"This is a blatant attempt to scare people again. I saw their numbers, they're ridiculous," Solberg said. "They should be ashamed for trying to scare people again like they did last time. This time it's not going to work."
Solberg predicted that once Canadians saw the fiscal plan of the Conservatives they would be reassured, but he would not release it Sunday, and said Harper would not have it before the public prior to tonight's debate.
"If we release the entire report, we'll be releasing the entire platform. So give us a chance to release our various planks of the platform," he said. "People will have a chance to look at the entire costing."
Instead, Solberg went on a renewed attack over the ongoing RCMP and the Ontario Securities Commission investigations into the timing of the Nov. 23 income trust announcement by Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's office and whether it was leaked, sparking a spike in trading.
When asked how the Conservatives could call for an investigation by Shapiro -- whose office has been vilified by the opposition as a toothless lapdog of the Prime Minister's Office -- Solberg said the Conservatives wanted parliamentary conduct to be investigated, not just criminal activity.
Ottawa Citizen with file from the Montreal Gazette
