OTTAWA—The NDP is urging the Harper government to use the Feb. 11 budget to help consumers, tackle cities’ needs, and bring back a popular green renovation program.

Peggy Nash, the party’s finance critic, says Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s focus on deficit-reduction is wrong-headed at a time when unemployment is at 7.2 per cent and the economy is still operating below potential.

Flaherty has said that instead of bringing in new spending measures to stimulate growth, his 2014 economic blueprint will concentrate on tightening Ottawa’s purse strings to eliminate the Conservatives’ $17.9-billion budget deficit by 2015.

“The Conservatives are signalling it will be a do-nothing budget,” Nash told the Star. “If they are going to wait another year or more to do anything, they are really abandoning the unemployed and abandoning all the families that are feeling so squeezed economically.

“They have a responsibility to act on behalf of Canadians and not just position themselves for the next federal election.”

Harper is expected to call an election and has promised tax breaks once the budget is balanced.

The NDP says Ottawa should use its spending and tax powers to strengthen the economy and help the country’s 1.4 million unemployed find jobs.

The party’s budget requests, being made public Wednesday, include several measures to make life “more affordable” for Canadians. Nash said her party wants the government to transform its throne speech promises in October into action. The NDP would like to see a cap on ATM fees, a limit on credit card interest rates, a crackdown on payday lenders and an end to the practice of companies charging consumers for printed monthly bills.

The NDP wants corporate tax cuts, worth an estimated $10 billion annually to business, tied directly to job creation. And the NDP also favours enhancement of the small business hiring tax credit and the creation of a similar tax credit for companies that hire youths.

The popular ecoENERGY home retrofit program, which helped homeowners pay for energy improvements, should be reinstated, the NDP says.

Nash noted that Ottawa has committed to long-term spending to help cities build sewers, bridges, transport and other infrastructure. But she said the distribution of money under the Building Canada Fund doesn’t grow rapidly until 2017. It should be increased this year and next, the NDP says.

In another pre-budget release, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released its annual “alternative” economic and fiscal strategy.

The CCPA, which is often critical of the government, says the current tax structure favours business and upper-income Canadians and should be reformed. It suggests a reversal of corporate income tax cuts, a new tax bracket for anyone making more than $250,000 annually and a carbon tax. The CCPA also favours a reduction in defence spending.

Through these and other fiscal measures, Ottawa would have the money to improve health care, bring in a national child-care plan, adequately address poverty, deal with immigrant problems and address a wide range of other social issues, the CCPA says.

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The Harper government stresses that Canada weathered the 2008-09 recession better than many countries and, on job-creation and economic expansion, has outperformed other industrialized nations in recent years.

“It is important that we continue to build on our successes and remain focused on the drivers of growth and job creation — innovation, investment, education, skills and communities — underpinned by our commitment to lower taxes and returning to a balanced budget in 2015,” Flaherty said as he prepared this year’s budget.

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