TORONTO—Liberal MPs were quick to jump on the Ontario government’s budget, attacking it for what they called “deep” cuts, but in at least three cases, federal politicians used the wrong number to try and prove their points.

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On Friday Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, Indigenous Services Minister Seamus O’Regan and Toronto area Liberal MPs Adam Vaughan repeated claims that Premier Doug Ford’s government is cutting the budget for the province’s Indigenous affairs department in half.

“The cuts are across the board,” Vaughan said in a tweeted video, as he claimed the province was making a “50 per cent cut to Indigenous services.”

O’Regan also took to Twitter to pile on, insisting the cuts send a bad message.

For reconciliation to be meaningful, everyone has to be at the table – Federal, Provincial and Indigenous partners. Cutting Indigenous Affairs by nearly 50% in the #OnPoli budget sends a really bad message to everyone else at the table. pic.twitter.com/cmvJbnVFpk — Seamus O’Regan (@SeamusORegan) April 12, 2019

However, the budget doesn’t do that and provincial Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford, who is also responsible for energy and northern development, called out federal ministers on Twitter.

“The minister has chosen to ignore the facts and distort the truth,” he tweeted.

Rather than a 50 per cent cut, the budget, tabled Thursday, shows an eight per cent cut from the 2018-19 budget year to the 2019-20 budget year — or a drop from $81 million to $74.4 million.

The cut is steeper, at 27 per cent, if you compare this year’s Indigenous affairs budget to what the Liberals were planning to spend on the portfolio in 2018-19, before they were booted from power.

But it only hits the 49 per cent mark if you include the one-time spending that come from land claim settlements. Ontario has already said that if land claims are settled this year, the extra money will be reflected in the department’s final budget.

Pressed on these points at a press conference in Toronto on Friday, Bennett was undeterred.

“This is very, very disappointing,” she said about what she called the halving of the Indigenous affairs budget. “It’s a setback in terms of the partnership that we need from provinces and territories to be able to really partner with First Nations, Inuit and Metis.

Of the funding cuts, Bennett said: “The actual services side, in terms of the calculations that we have made, is 49 per cent.”

By that standard, the former Liberal government cut the department’s budget by 92 per cent in 2018-19 when it didn’t make a $1.1 billion payout for land claims in 2017-18 as part of the annual budget for the department in future years.

Still, Bennett said the assertion of a 49 per cent cut still holds up because “there are other settlements forthcoming and that money is not there.”

[READ MORE: Federal Liberals say Scheer would follow on Ford’s service cuts]

However, Kathleen Wynne’s government also didn’t consistently budget ahead of time for settlements. For example, in 2018-19 the Liberals didn’t budget for any land claims or other one-time payments, but the Tories say they’ve now paid $65 million in one-time claims for that period.

In a statement Indigenous Affairs spokesperson Sydney Stonier said the province doesn’t budget for settlements in advance “because this would prejudice negotiations.”

She said there are about 40 land claim negotiations underway and “it would be inappropriate to speculate on future settlements of land claims currently in negotiation as this would prejudice negotiations.”

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