OTTAWA—The federal Liberal Party is wooing Canadians with a broad tax break, assistance for post-secondary students, and a grab-bag of pocketbook measures — and hoping they don’t mind continued multibillion dollar deficits to pay for it.

Justin Trudeau, who broke his 2015 campaign promise to balance the books by this year, has turned on the spending taps in his re-election platform with 48 new initiatives that carry a $9-billion price tag in 2020-21, rising to $16 billion by 2023-24.

But the Liberals are betting their re-election appeal — which includes a focus on Indigenous issues, the environment and a host of targeted affordability measures — overshadows any voter concern about the country’s bottom line.

“So here’s the Liberal pitch. We will make your life more affordable. We will make your streets safer. And we will fight climate change,” said Trudeau as he unveiled the Liberal platform in Mississauga on Sunday afternoon.

“That’s at the core of what we stand for as a party and as a movement,” he said.

The 85-page platform details some pledges already unveiled in the campaign — such as not charging federal taxes on Canadians’ first $15,000 in income, a pledge to plant two billion trees by 2030, and a populist pitch to lower cellphone bills — as well as some new measures meant to entice voters to the Liberal fold.

The party is promising more generous student grants — up to $1,200 more per year — and more flexible terms on repaying student loans. Graduates would have a grace period of up to two years before they have to start repaying student loans. Graduates can also delay paying back the loans until they make at least $35,000 per year, up from the current threshold of $25,000. New parents still saddled with student loans could pause repayments until their child turns five.

There is also a promise for “career insurance benefits” to provide more generous support — as much as $15,900 over two years — to workers left unemployed long-term by company closures. The Liberals would also set the minimum wage at $15 an hour for federally regulated industries. That minimum wage would increase with inflation starting in 2020.

As previously reported by the Star, the platform beefs up the Liberals’ promised action on gun control with the pledge of $250 million over five years to help Canadian cities combat guns and gangs. Toronto Mayor John Tory applauded the promised investment and urged other parties to make a similar commitment. However, the platform reveals that the Liberals plan to spend more each year on a “learn to camp” program.

The Liberals are pitching a smattering of measures meant to underscore the differences between the party and their political rivals, such as a promise to strengthen local news programming at the CBC and a new dedicated refugee stream to take in human rights advocates, journalists and humanitarian workers at risk. The platform restates the Liberal promise to “protect a woman’s right to make decisions about her body.”

“We won’t take Canada backwards to the debates Canadian women have already fought,” the platform explained, despite no major party suggesting abortion rights should be restricted.

In 2015, the Liberals pledged a bold vision to reform Canada’s electoral system. The government did not deliver on that promise. The 2019 platform dangles more modest parliamentary reforms, including giving MPs more time to introduce and debate private members’ bills and giving the Speaker more power to call on MPs to speak during debate, rather than relying on a list provided by the party.

While in 2015 Trudeau and the Liberals promised a return to Canada playing a larger role in international affairs, the party’s 2019 platform has more modest expectations.

The Liberals are proposing an additional $150 million between 2021 and 2024 for UN peacekeeping and conflict prevention exercises. The party is committing an additional $45 million over the same period for the defence and law enforcement agencies to up training and support for international allies.

The party would also establish the Canadian Centre for Peace, Order and Good Government with a $150-million, three-year commitment beginning in 2021. The centre would “lend expertise” to people looking to advance human rights, promote democracy and improve governance, according to the party’s platform.

A dedicated stream for up to 250 refugees per year is also envisioned in the Liberals’ re-election pitch, giving the government an option to give activists, journalists and humanitarian workers at risk a safe haven in Canada. And the Liberals are proposing to “build on” the Magnitsky sanctions regime, creating a mechanism to transfer seized assets from sanctioned human rights abusers to their victims.

The platform books new taxes to help partially offset the spending vows. The party would institute a spending review expected to find $2 billion in savings in its first year, would attempt to crackdown on corporate tax loopholes to generate $1.7 billion in revenue in 2020-21, and bring in a new tax on tech giants, expected to raise $540 million. The platform also proposes a tax on vacant residential properties owned by non-Canadians, projected to raise $217 million, and a 10 per cent luxury tax on the purchase of cars, boats and personal airplanes costing more than $100,000. That luxury tax is expected to pull in $585 million.

The Liberals claim that the measures will raise $5.2 billion in new revenue in 2020-21, and total more than $25 billion over four years. Yet an analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officer warned there was a high level of uncertainty around the new revenue.

For example, on the plan to tax foreign-owned vacant properties, the PBO said the assumptions on foreign ownership were based on condominium ownership, and therefore might be “an imperfect proxy” on the true value of home ownership. The projected revenues from taxing tech giants was also assessed as highly uncertain — both because of the difficulty in estimating which companies would actually pay, and the expectation that tech companies would restructure their services to avoid paying more taxes.

Likewise for the Liberals’ plan to tax luxury goods like cars, boats and personal aircraft. “Sales of luxury goods are sensitive to uncertainty … buyers might switch to lower-priced products and sellers could offer pricing options to avoid this tax,” the PBO wrote. “The exact magnitude of this response is uncertain and depends on the price sensitivity of consumers.”

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Even the Liberals’ projection of new revenue falls short of the expected price tag for new spending promises. The new spending would push the deficit to $27.4 billion in 2020-21, up from $14 billion now and a far cry from the balanced budget promised four years ago.

However, the debt-to-GDP ratio — adopted by the Liberals as their preferred indicator of fiscal health — is projected to decline slowly to 30.2 per cent in 2023-24 from 30.9 per cent in 2020-21.

Yet the plan fails to cost several elements of the platform, such as pharmacare that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated could cost $19.3 billion alone, meaning the price of the Liberal platform could be higher than revealed Sunday.

Former finance minister Ralph Goodale defended the broken budget vow, saying the Liberal government had to focus on growth and investments. “The economy had stalled. It was stagnant. It wasn’t growing fast enough,” Goodale, the campaign co-chair, told reporters at a news conference Sunday.

With political and trade uncertainty around the globe, economic growth remains a concern, he said, justifying the continued spending.

“Growth is going to continue to be a necessary imperative and a significant challenge. What we’re saying here is we need to continue the effort to invest in people, invest in jobs,” Goodale said.

But Conservative Pierre Poilievre accused Trudeau of running a “credit card campaign.”

“He is frivously spraying money in all directions uncontrollably and he will stick Canadians with the bill after the election,” Poilievre said, branding the platform as “irresponsible and costly.”

He said the Conservatives would soon be releasing their own fully costed platform showing how they intend to balance the books within five years.

The Liberal platform also devotes considerable space for promises to Indigenous communities. The party is pledging to introduce legislation to harmonize Canadian law with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the end of 2020. They’re also promising to eliminate all long-term drinking water advisories on reserve by 2021, improve the quality of health care services, and work with Indigenous communities to address “all major infrastructure needs” by 2030.

The Liberals are upfront that their efforts on reconciliation to date have fallen short for some.

“While we have made a lot of progress together, more work needs to be done to build on the investments we’ve made and keep moving this important relationship — and our country — forward,” the platform reads.

Clarification - October 1, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that referred to the federal Liberal pledge to raise the basic personal amount, a non-refundable tax credit, to $15,000 from $12,000 as an ‘across-the-board’ tax break.

With files from Jennifer Pagliaro

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