One of the NDP’s talking points about the Liberals is that they don’t have a plan. They do, and it is quite substantial - including major investments in a bunch of things that are long overdue and will pay off massively in the future: First Nations education ($2.6-billion+ over five years) and infrastructure - $9.5-billion every year for years.

Justin Trudeau has said that he is willing to run a deficit of $10-billion or so until 2019 in order to make sure this all happens. Stephen Harper mocked this, despite the fact that he has had eight consecutive deficits and added $150-billion to Canada’s national debt - more than every Liberal Government in the past 50 years combined.

This is being portrayed as “left of the NDP.” Deficit spending on infrastructure during a recession is not “left wing” it is mainstream, centrist Keynesian economics. It may well be to the left of Mulcair and his advisors, who persuaded the NDP to board the neoliberal bandwagon five years after the 2008 financial disaster showed that it was a failure.

It may be that people don’t bother to read policies, or platforms, and that they are so bound up in the fights of the past that they won’t see just how the Liberals and NDP have both changed.

If that’s the case, it will be a shame, because Justin Trudeau is not just offering different policies that will actually make a dramatic difference in many Canadians’ lives, but he is being honest about running deficits - and (I hope) driving a stake through the heart of an undead economic ideology that deserves to die: Justin Trudeau, vampire killer.

Since we are already in a recession, and there is a fair bit of turmoil on the markets, with China and the price of oil, we also appear to be back in deficit, though the Conservatives thought they would be in surplus.

Tom Mulcair, for his part, has said he will have a balanced budget next year. This has raised obvious questions about how the NDP would pay for its promises. If the government is already in deficit, measures that increase revenues like tax hikes or cancelling income splitting will help balance the budget, but only for the status quo of Conservative policies currently in place. Paying for new spending and programs means either raising more revenue, borrowing, or cutting (or all three).

Now, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals have done something “bold” and “risky” which is to say that, in order to pay for their commitments - of infrastructure, for example - they will run a deficit of $10-billion a year for three years - 80% less debt than the Harper Conservatives have added. However, because infrastructure helps put people to work, grow the economy and make it more efficient and productive in the long term, Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio would actually get better.

Now, if you go to the Liberal website and the NDP website, you can look at their plans. The Liberals’ is a lot busier, has more commitments, but also has a lot more numbers attached.

The NDP has not released numbers on many of its major commitments.

They do have bold, simple promises, but virtually every single one should have a massive asterisk, because they almost never deliver what is being said.

It is not just on one policy, it is on many, many of their major platform planks that are supposed to address major issues, like the economy and inequality.

These are four of the major platform planks that are supposed to be related to boosting the economy or helping the middle class inequality. What is required is something substantial, but what is being offered is timid.

Then there are legal issues:

Mulcair has promised to "decriminalize” marijuana “the minute the NDP is elected.” But there is a very big difference between decriminalization and legalization. Under the NDP’s platform, a person caught smoking marijuana could still get a ticket (like a parking ticket) - it might be a “summary offense” just not a criminal charge. Dealing and growing would still be illegal - so personal possession might be fine, but you would still have to buy it from someone the government considers a criminal.



The Liberal policy has very different consequences: Legalize, regulate and tax marijuana, the way you would booze. This means the entire marijuana industry would be “legitimized” in the sense that no one would be at risk of criminal charges, and a multi-billion dollar business would be subject to provincial and federal taxation. This means the Liberal plan on marijuana could raise billions in revenue compared to the NDP, as well as possibly save on enforcement, court and jail costs.



Ignoring the Supreme Court

The NDP want to repeal the Clarity Act, which is a based on the Supreme Court of Canada’s recommendation for how Quebec could legally separate. Aside from the total lack of urgency or necessity in reopening this issue, the NDP’s Sherbrooke declaration ignores the Supreme Court.



On Senate Abolition, Mulcair is likewise ignoring the Supreme Court, sometimes in ways that are impossible to explain.

The Supreme Court ruled that abolishing the Canadian Senate would require all ten provinces and the Federal government to agree. This is a higher threshold than just changing the constitution, which requires seven provinces totalling 50% of the population. Provinces have already said no, but any province can use their leverage, if the constitution is to be reopened, to ask for more powers.



Mulcair has also suggested just not appointing Senators (and some in the NDP have suggested defunding the Senate). This is a huge problem in two ways, practical and constitutional. People might not like the Senate, but it is still required to pass laws. Refusing to appoint senators or defunding the senate means no laws, which means no government, no budgets, no nothing. It would, as commentators have noted, be “abolishing the Senate by stealth” - which, since it takes all the Premiers to agree, is not in the power of the Prime Minister to do - it is unconstitutional. Yet Mulcair has promised to do it.

If there is a common thread to all these promises, is how small the reality is compared to the upfront commitment.

Mulcair is full of bluster and big promises, at the expense of precision. Time after time, his numbers don’t add up, or are wrong. There was the time, when addressing a business audience in Toronto that, he got the number of years it would take to roll out his own child care promise wrong, and after promising to raise the corporate tax rate, not only would not say by how much, but got the corporate tax rate wrong.

When asked how he would balance the budget, Mulcair said he would back off the promise of a health care increase - which is a $36-billion commitment at the core of his platform, because it depends on surpluses.



The other claim he made was that he would save $1-billion by getting rid of the Senate. Aside from being a logistical impossibility (as noted above) the NDP’s own anti-senate website points out that it costs $90-million a year, not $1-billion.



Finally, an analysis by Le Soleil took a look at the NDP’s promise to “lift 200,000 seniors out of poverty” with a $400-million increase in Guaranteed Income for Seniors. The analysis showed that it was a “gross exaggeration” - the number of seniors in poverty was uncertain, but varied between 250,000 and 583,000.



Now, every dollar for a person living in poverty matters: but $57 a month - $1.90 a day - is not going to lift 583,000 seniors out of poverty.

The NDP appear to be aping the Liberals’ commitment to lift 315,000 children out of poverty with the Liberal Canada Child Benefit. The difference is that the figure for the Liberals was determined by an independent analysis, and the amount of money being spent is in the multiple billions.



The reason Mulcair may believe that he can balance the budget is because his promises, once examined carefully, are all so tissue-thin, or have so much fine print attached.

Mulcair has no intention of immediately raising the minimum wage for everyone to $15/hr. Only a few thousand will benefit, and it won’t be for five years.



Mulcair has no intention of immediately providing $15/day national child care. It will take eight years to roll out, and the provinces still need to agree.



Mulcair has no intention of lifting 200,000 Seniors out of poverty. That’s just marketing puffery.



Mulcair has no intention of creating jobs with the small business tax cut.



Mulcair knows he can’t abolish the Senate,



Tom Mulcair knows all these things won’t work. But he and his team don’t care, they just want to win. But voters should care - and NDP supporters certainly should care.

If you point out that these promises are misleading - when you call the NDP on their BS, they respond with one of two attacks: either talk about Paul Martin and Liberal cuts in the 1990s, or falsely suggest you are attacking their policies. “Why do you hate workers/seniors/small businesses/parents who need child care?” is the equally misleading counterattack.

The alternative to Liberal cuts in the 1990s was for Canada to default on its debt and surrender its sovereignty (and social programs) to the International Monetary Fund. But even as the NDP rails against Martin and the Liberals, they heap praise on their own practitioners of austerity and boast that the NDP did a better job of balancing budgets - never mind that Roy Romanow closed hospitals or people worked four days a week to do it.

The answer is that I like workers, seniors, small businesses and parents who need child care very much, and I don’t like it when they are misled. I don’t like it when a politician treats good honest people who want their problems solved as if they are marks to be manipulated in a long con.

Because if you make the mistake of believing these promises - without reading the fine print - well, the joke’s on you.

But if you are a voter, you should of course care about all these things. Because Mulcair and the NDP are promising to deliver something they have no intention of making happen.



It is long past time to realize that a balanced budget is not the only measure of an economy’s health. Just recently, Greece had nearly balanced its budget - but the unemployment rate for adults was 25%, for youth 50%, and people were regularly eating out of the garbage.



After years of tawdry scandals, trials, and failed promises to clean up politics it can seem impossible to believe anyone.

At this point, supporting the NDP with Mulcair as leader requires a position of extreme skepticism. It means refusing to believe that Liberals will deliver on their promises of stimulus - though they say they are willing to run deficits to do so - but they also refusing to believe their own leader will deliver on his own promises of cuts, even as he publicly backs off on promised corporate tax hikes and on restoring health care funding .

But if we believe both Trudeau and Mulcair, the choice is between:

The NDP, who will put balancing the budget ahead of delivering their promises, and



The Liberals, who have said they will put delivering their promises on jobs and growth ahead of balancing the budget - in order to lay the groundwork for future growth.



So make your choice: Liberals are offering investment, jobs and growth, but Harper, Mulcair and the NDP are offering more of the same as the Conservatives. It might be hard to believe - but the evidence is there, and there is plenty of it.



