Pumpkinomics

My guess is the Liberals are going to go to town on this:

A prominent economist commissioned by the Conservatives to assess the financial soundness of their election platform says major items were omitted from the version he was given. Paul Darby, deputy chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada, originally concluded that Stephen Harper's Conservative platform "is affordable in each fiscal year from 2005-2006 through 2010-2011." The Conservative party promoted that conclusion last week as evidence its election platform had been "independently verified" by the Conference Board, an Ottawa-based think-tank. But Darby says the version of the platform he was given to vet didn't include a Conservative party health-care guarantee which states patients will be transported to another jurisdiction if they can't get timely care at home. It also omitted a Tory platform promise to redress the so-called "fiscal imbalance" between Ottawa and the provinces.

It should be noted the platform leaves $23-billion of unallocated surplus (the Conference Board, using different assumptions, reckons it's $16-billion), on top of the $3-billion annual contingency reserve, which should be more than enough to cover these. At any rate, all the Conservatives have to say is, if we can't reach agreement with the provinces within these limits, we won't proceed. Put the onus on the premiers. Still, it looks bad, especially for a party sensitive to "hidden agenda" charges. What the Tories can't say, but I will, is this: even if we do run a small deficit, we do not all turn into pumpkins. The Grits were earlier trying to claim, on the basis of who know's whose numbers, that the Tories would run a "$12-billion deficit." Even if that were true, which I doubt, that's $12-billion over five years, or a little more than $2-billion a year -- they could fund it out of the contingency reserve. And even if they did not, that's $2-billion, on a GDP in excess of $1.4-trillion. That's not even rounding error. It's rounding error on the rounding error. I don't like deficits any more than the next guy -- less than most -- but let's get real here. UPDATE: That didn't take long. UPPERDATE: The Conservatives reply:

Today Paul Darby, Deputy Chief Economist of the Conference Board of Canada, confirmed to us that his original analysis of the Conservative Party of Canada’s election plan released January 13, 2006, remains unchanged: "In summary, we found that the Conservative Party’s economic platform is affordable in each fiscal year from 2005-2006 through 2010-2011. In each year there is enough fiscal room to pay down at least $3 billion a year in debt, as in the [Conservative] fiscal plan. "Over the five-year forecast horizon to 2010-11, the CBoC economic and fiscal outlook suggests that there remains $15.7 billion in unallocated fiscal room, over and above the $3 billion annual debt payment, which provides further cushion to ensure that deficits do not occur due to adverse economic events." Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has always made it clear that the details of the fiscal imbalance will be negotiated with the provinces and that surplus revenues exist in the Conservative plan to deal with this issue. Mr. Harper has said on numerous occasions that the Patient Health Care Guarantee will be paid for from existing budgetary resources.

UPPESTDATE: Of course, none of this would have even come up had the Tories not climbed on board with the provinces' phoney "fiscal imbalance" campaign. Live by the demagoguery, die by the demagoguery.