The NDP platform has an estimated $3 billion-a-year hole in it due to a “major mistake” in crunching the numbers, the Liberals charge.

Taking aim at the New Democrats, who appear on the rise in recent polls, Finance Minister Charle Sousa said the party made “a significant, sizable, and undeniable mistake” in crafting its 97-page campaign manifesto.

The NDP insists no error was made, but the Liberals claim it’s an unintentional “blunder.”

“As a result they have defunded billions of dollars that flow to valued programs,” Sousa told reporters Monday at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Training Facility in Downsview.

“It’s a failure of basic competence that leads to real consequences and it means the NDP are running on a program of careless cuts and unfunded promises,” said the Mississauga South Liberal candidate.

The dispute stems from the NDP apparently ignoring a chart in the March budget entitled “key changes in the medium-term expense outlook since the 2017 budget.”

“This chart includes both new items in the 2018 budget and all major investments in the last year and their platform misstates this chart, assuming it includes only new commitments in the new budget of 2018,” said Sousa.

“To make it simple, they missed a whole year. They built their program based on the wrong budget year. It means they are not just eliminating our future program commitments; it means they are also eliminating existing programs.”

As a result, the Liberals say the NDP’s “Change For The Better” platform would over three years cut $800 million from the seniors’ healthy homes program;

$300 million from women’s shelters; $300 million for new guidance counsellors; $300 million for special education; $220 million from combating the opiod crisis; $170 million from apprenticeship programs for skilled trades; $137 million from the legalized cannabis implementation strategy; $85 million from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund; $63 million from the jobs and prosperity fund; $62 million from autism services; and $33 million from the Toronto-Windsor high-speed rail project, among other things.

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In a statement, Western University economist Mike Moffatt, who is director of policy and research at the Liberal-friendly Canada 2020 think-tank in Ottawa, said Sousa’s “analysis is accurate.”

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“It is clear the NDP based their fiscal plan off Ontario's 2018-19 budget and then carved out all spending since the tabling of the 2017-18 budget and not just the new expenditures in the 2018-19 budget,” said Moffatt.

“The carve-out means some programs already in place would not be funded under the NDP plan,” he said.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath countered that if elected June 7 her government would “definitely not” be making the cuts the Liberals have outlined.

“In fact, what we’ve always said is where things are working, we’re going to protect them. It’s where things are not working that we need to fix,” she told reporters at a campaign stop at a dairy farm in Watford, in southwestern Ontario.

When asked if it’s possible that the NDP got the numbers wrong, Horwath insisted “not at all.”

“In fact, we’ve had the parliamentary budget officer that used to work in Ottawa check our numbers, and he said they are solid,” she said, referring to Kevin Page, who ensured the costing of the platform was reasonable, but did not opine on whether there are any cuts.

“We are confident that our plan not only takes care of things that had been already in place in the base budget, but that the additions to the plans that we put in place versus what the Liberals have in mind are going to help families much, much more,” said Horwath.

“I can tell you this — anybody who thinks that the Liberals’ numbers are sound hasn’t been paying attention to what they’ve been doing at Queen’s Park for the last number of years,” she added, referring to “highly critical” reports of the government’s budget numbers by both the province’s auditor general and financial accountability officer.

The NDP platform, however, uses the government’s accounting and figures — not those of the two fiscal watchdogs, which dispute including $11 billion in joint-sponsored pension plan assets to the province’s bottom line.

Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, who is tied with or trailing Horwath in polls — well behind Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford — said it’s important to take “a hard look” at the other parties.

Ford has promised to release a fully-costed platform before next month’s election.

“Ontario Liberals have been clear: we have been bringing more care and choice to the people of the province,” said Wynne, noting the Tory leader’s pledge to cut 4 per cent of government spending will mean a reduction of at least $6 billion.

With 85 per cent of spending going to salaries, she said that would mean thousands of job cuts for teachers, nurses, firefighters, police, doctors, and others on the public payroll.

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