September 27, 2007
OTTAWA - The Conservative government's massive under-estimation of this year's surplus is just another broken promise in a long line of Conservative failures according to Liberal Finance Critic John McCallum.
"This is a Prime Minister who has promised repeatedly to budget close to the bone and to ensure 'truth in budgeting' by giving Canadians the real deal on the size of the federal surplus," said Mr. McCallum. "Today's announcement proves that he is either incapable of doing this or that he simply lied to Canadians about his intention to do so."
Mr. McCallum was reacting to the Conservative government's announcement today that it had accumulated a $13.8-billion surplus.
During the 2006 election, Stephen Harper promised to forecast budget surpluses accurately and wrote in his platform that, "Governments cannot be held to account if Parliament does not know the accurate state of public finances."
"If you take the 2005 version of Stephen Harper at his word, then today's Stephen Harper has just admitted that he is running an unaccountable government by deceiving Parliament about the size of the federal surplus," said Mr. McCallum. "This is another abhorrent example of the promises this Prime Minister made in order to get into power with absolutely no interest in honouring them when he assumed office."
Mr. McCallum also accused the government of deceiving the public by frequently touting their tax back guarantee, which has so far not funded any broad-based tax relief to Canadians.
"The Finance Minister may like to brag about his tax back guarantee but the reality is that he is deceptively using it to fund targeted tax measures and program spending that benefit certain Canadians while giving absolutely nothing to others," said McCallum.
"If you ask him to point to any spot in Budget 2007 that cut general income tax rates in order to satisfy the spirit of his 2006 tax back guarantee all you'll get is obfuscation and no answers. In fact, the only change this government has made to the general personal income tax rate since coming to power was to raise the lowest bracket from 15 per cent in 2005 to 15.25 per cent in 2006 and again to 15.5 per cent in 2007."
