Green Party Leader Elizabeth May joins climate change activists and students as they gather in Calgary for a protest and "die-in", on the steps of the Calgary Municipal Building in Calgary on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dave Chidley

The Green Party received a passing grade from the former Parliamentary Budget Officer on their second attempt at a costed platform, after re-releasing a version to replace the edition that was graded as a “fail” last week.

Kevin Page as Canada’s first Parliamentary Budget Officer and is an economist at the University of Ottawa, where he leads the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy. The institute is assessing each of the federal party’s costed platforms upon their release.

The Greens’ platform that they released last week was originally given a failing grade by the institute for not using realistic and credible economic and fiscal projections, not properly exercising responsible fiscal management and not being up to the institute’s standards of transparency.

READ MORE: Green Party releases costed election platform

“A number of the things that were intended to be included in the public release (of the original costed platform) were removed in an effort to clean up the content and removed notes; all of those should have gone to Kevin Page immediately so that he had all the information to review,” Green leader Elizabeth May told iPolitics last Friday when asked about the criticism that her party received about their platform.

“I’m very confident that the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy will be pleased with what we produce,” May had said last week.

The Greens quietly published the more complete version of their costed platform this week (the URL of the webpage where it’s found indicates it was released on Wednesday) and received a “Pass” grade from Page and his team of economists. It passed in the principles of realistic economic and fiscal assumptions and transparency but was still graded a “Fail” for responsible fiscal management.

“It is a significantly improved document from the earlier release. From a voter perspective, there is a clearer picture of the baseline assumptions and articulation of economic and fiscal challenges and uncertainties associated with the Green Party’s Platform,” says the latest report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy.

The institute also says the Greens’ policies related to pharmacare, education, infrastructure and the environment are “ambitious” in comparison to other parties.

The revised version of the Greens’ platform includes an explanation of its rationale for the costing of its expenses and revenues, additional notes about their projections, new financial tables and a few changes to the figures they first reported.

The new version of the platform dropped a $100-million a year proposal for a permanent local transit fund, adjusted the funds proposed to give to a Sudbury-based mining innovation hub from $150 million over three years to $40 in one year, adjusted the cost program to expand small-scale agriculture from $3 million each year to $2.5 million each year and added a projected $1.3 billion revenue increase over five years by recalculating how much the government would save by eliminating Registered Education Savings Plans (the Greens’ plan to make college and university tuition free for all Canadian students would cost $57.5 billion over five years, while it expects to save $6.7 billion in RESPs over that same time).

The revised costed platform also adds an East-West power grid at a cost of $0; the Greens say it will be funded as a capital asset by reallocating money that is intending to be spent by the government on the Trans Mountain Expansion.

The Greens were the first party to release a costed version of their platform when they released their original version last week. The Liberals released a version of their platform with costing for new measures over the weekend, which Page’s Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy graded overall as “Good.” The Liberals weakest component of the three that the institute has committed to assessing each of the political parties’ platforms on was in the use of realistic and credible economic and fiscal projections, which the party was still given a passing grade for.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer wouldn’t say when his party would release the fully costed version of their platform when asked by reporters on Monday. New Democratic Party spokesperson Melanie Richer said her party would be releasing the costed version of its platform in the next two weeks.

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