A look at the parties’ economic plans for Manitoba

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This article was published 13/04/2016 (3484 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Election campaigns are expensive. Tax dollars go to financing the parties and the polls and politicians buy voter support, in effect, by promising to spend more on select programs.

There are a few common threads in the promises — everyone wants to cut the cost of an ambulance ride; post-secondary students need more grants; infrastructure spending has to rise.

But when the parties have to add up the columns, and balance it against the revenues, voters expect see clear distinctions defining the approaches.

That exercise added as much fog as clarity to the picture.

New Democrats

Greg Selinger says if you want to know what his promise-a-day campaign will cost, you can look at the March mini-budget, released as a stand-in for a real budget.

The fiscal update shocked opposition and media, almost doubling the summary deficit projected for 2015/16.

The document gave no detail on where the new spending would go, something the party has left to Manitobans to figure out for themselves.

Liberals

Rana Bokhari also doesn’t like to be caught up in finer details, and her costing plan announcement was a bust for Manitobans wanting a sense she was firmly in control of the numbers.

The Liberals put price tags on their promises ($144 million this year), but then released multi-year projections for spending and deficits ($569 million this year) that did not account for the new spending.

Asked why the two weren’t reconciled, a Tory media aide offered to buy a Free Press writer a calculator for Christmas.

Progressive Conservatives

The Tories have always argued they are naturally better at managing, but their costing plan, which promises to cut $22 million from this year’s projected deficit, relies on a dollop of fiscal pixie dust.

Their promises, this year, will cost $117 million, offset by what the party says will be $139 million in cost-cutting — including a whopping, undefined $51 million in “other” savings — in a “value for money” review.