PCs accuse NDP of ‘hiding’ $180M gap in fiscal plan

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This article was published 26/03/2016 (3487 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives say NDP Leader Greg Selinger has been caught misleading the province again.

The sentiment comes after PC finance critic Cameron Friesen, a candidate in Morden-Winkler, told a group of supporters on Saturday that Selinger and the NDP manipulated federal numbers to hide an estimated $180 million gap in Selinger’s fiscal plan, evidence they say shows the NDP leader’s plans to raise taxes if re-elected.

“The federal budget has exposed Greg Selinger’s deliberate attempt to pad the numbers by claiming massive increases in federal infrastructure money that don’t exist,” Friesen said in a release. “This shortfall exposes Selinger’s plan to hike the PST or other taxes to make up the difference.”

The PCs claim the NDP’s fiscal update projects a six-fold increase in federal infrastructure cost-sharing, from $52 million to $316 million in 2016-17. They say the number will be less than half of that at $135 million, creating the estimated $181 million gap.

The federal government has not officially released how much infrastructure funding each province will be given.

Instead, the PCs came up with the figure by assuming how much per capita funding the province would receive based on how much has been allocated to Manitoba in the past.

In a statement released by the NDP, the party says they’re standing firm on the numbers they put forth in their fiscal outlook.

“Based on the federal budget and its’ commitment to the Building Canada Fund, the Lake Manitoba/Lake St. Martin channels and Freedom Road, we stand by the numbers estimated by provincial finance officials in the government’s recent Economic and Fiscal Outlook,” the statement reads.

“Their number of $135 million just doesn’t make sense. We are not sure how Brian Pallister made that number up, but we’re sure that when he’s asked he won’t have any idea either.”

Friesen said the budget process doesn’t begin on Feb 1.

“It’s a annual process,” he said. “We made it clear in the Legislature in the weeks prior to this fantasy document that the government produced, that the real budget must be in their office somewhere because the work would have been done. They chose to disclose something other than a budget. You have to ask yourself, why did they do that?”

The NDP said Pallister and the PCs can’t have their cake and eat it too.

“The Conservatives can’t have it both ways: demand a provincial budget before the federal government releases their plan, and then criticizing us for estimates in the Economic and Fiscal Outlook,” the NDP statement read.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca