NIAGARA FALLS—Tim Hudak is sticking by numbers in his “Million Jobs Plan” that economists warn greatly overestimate the number of jobs the Progressive Conservatives policy would create.

Several prominent economists, including three former senior federal Finance Department administrators, say the Progressive Conservatives badly miscalculated the number of jobs that would be created by Hudak’s policies.

Instead of creating one million jobs — the heart of Hudak’s pitch in the provincial election — the economists argue the party’s own data shows the plan would create just a fraction of that number.

Campaigning in Niagara Falls on Wednesday, Hudak brushed aside the criticism and said he stands by his numbers.

“The economics (of the plan) is straightforward,” Hudak told reporters. “Permanent reductions in taxes on job creators and families mean permanent jobs.”

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Hudak said that the Conference Board of Canada, as well as U.S. economist Benjamin Zycher, came to similar conclusions in reports contracted by the Progressive Conservatives.

But Paul Boothe, a professor with the Ivey Business School and a former deputy minister in the Harper government, suggested the plan might create as few as 75,000 new jobs. Writing in Macleans magazine, Boothe noted the new jobs are outweighed by Hudak’s pledge to cut 100,000 public service jobs in his first four years as premier.

Pointing to labour economist Jim Stanford’s analysis, Boothe wrote the PCs conflated “person years of employment” with permanent jobs created — so each job was counted eight times over the eight-year plan.

Fellow Ivey professor Mike Moffatt, writing in Canadian Business, agreed with Stanford’s analysis. As did Scott Clark and Peter DeVries, two former senior administrators in the federal Finance Department, in a post on the website iPolitics.

An official with the Hudak campaign, who did not wish to be identified, said that was the case for some of the job projections in the plan, but not all. The official said the party made the million jobs projection using a number of sources, some of which measured impact by person years, some which measured permanent jobs.

The official noted the party has been transparent about what data was used to make the million jobs projection.

Hudak’s opponents seized the opportunity to lambaste the Tories. Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne said Hudak’s platform is an “utter fiction” because Hudak “got the math wrong.”

“Just to use an example, if we use the math that was used to predict the job creation in Tim Hudak’s platform he’s been a member of provincial parliament for 19 years and . . . that would mean 19 jobs are created,” Wynne told reporters.

“We know that Tim Hudak and his team got it flat wrong.”

In Toronto, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath scoffed at the Conservatives’ “nonsensical” platform.

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“I don’t think anyone can make heads nor tails of what Mr. Hudak is proposing,” Horwath said.

“I mean, he says a million jobs and then he’s going to throw 100,000 families to the curb?”