Canada election: Former budget watchdog weighs in on Conservative and Liberal platforms

Hi there, J.P. Tasker here on the Conservative campaign trail.

I’m at Poilievre’s rally in Vaughan, Ont., at the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) local headquarters — one of the private sector unions backing the Conservatives in this election.

Poilievre and his team are quite proud of the inroads they’ve made with labour in this election, especially those that represent people in trades. The party’s platform this morning explicitly promised not to revive Stephen Harper-era labour laws that were widely condemned as anti-union. The party has changed a lot over the last 10 years — the base is increasingly blue-collar with business interests taking a back seat.

The crowd is rather large, but I’ve seen bigger ones for Poilievre. The campaign team is a bit defensive, pointing out that the Toronto Maple Leafs play the Ottawa Senators in Game 2 of their playoff series tonight. In a region that bleeds blue — as in Leafs blue — it’s tough to draw folks away from their television screens for a political rally.

I'm one of the reporters travelling with the NDP — and trying not to throw up on a moving bus.

The packed schedule of a cross-Canada election campaign means journalists along for the ride have incredibly tight time frames to write their stories.

It means most of us spend every moment as we travel between campaign stops working on our laptops.

All the ginger, Gravol and mental fortitude is not enough to help me on this New Democrat bus as it drives through winding roads in B.C.

Laptops have gone flying, drinks have been spilled, and a few curse words have been uttered.

But trying to eat butter chicken as we careen through the hills of Vancouver Island is something I hope I won’t experience again any time soon.

As for the Liberals, Page's team at the IFSD gave the party's costed platform a grade of "good." The assessment is based on three principles: realistic and credible economic and fiscal assumptions, responsible fiscal management, and transparency.

The Liberals got "good" on all three, while the Conservatives got a “pass” on the first two and a "good" on transparency. Neither party got a failing grade for any principle.

The Liberals have a projected deficit of $131.4 billion over the next four years, while the Conservatives’ projected deficit is $100 billion. The main difference, again, is that the Conservatives included potential revenues generated by policy changes. By that measure, Page says, the deficit differences between the two parties would be much smaller.

Page also said the economy is likely headed for a recession, which usually leads to a higher deficit.

The Liberals have given themselves a "hard target" of balancing the country's operating budget by 2029, which Page noted Parliament could easily hold them to account for.

"I actually think they'll have a hard time meeting that target," he said.

Hey there, I'm Verity, your afternoon live page writer. We're back with some updates as Power & Politics host David Cochrane is interviewing experts on the parties' costed platforms.

Kevin Page is a former parliamentary budget officer and has been crunching the numbers for the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa.

Taking a look at the Conservative platform released today, Page's team gave it an overall pass. He said the party didn't get a better grade because of its unorthodox approach to calculate potential revenue growth as part of its projected deficit reduction.

"It's not a good budgeting practice," Page said. "I would say that is a mistake on the Conservatives' part."

Poilievre has said revenues generated from home-building and repealing C-69, among other policies, would generate up to $60 billion in revenue for Canada. Page called this an "excessively high number" and said there was a "major credibility problem with those estimates."

Carney said today that if his party had used the same math as Poilievre, he'd be projecting a balanced budget within five years.

With the party leaders’ early events wrapped up, we’re temporarily hitting pause on our live updates. But be sure to check back later, because we’re expecting a lot of insightful analysis and lively debate on today’s edition of Power & Politics beginning at 5 p.m. ET.

Much of that discussion will be focused on the Conservatives’ costed election platform, which Poilievre released this morning at an event in Vaughan, Ont.

The platform includes promises that amount to $90 billion in new measures over the next four years that will be paid for in part by cuts and the economic growth the party says these measures will generate.

As expected, the commitments and their price tag have drawn strong reactions from across the political spectrum. If you’re just getting here, scroll down to get caught up.

Our colleague Peter Zimonjic in Ottawa also took a deep dive into the Conservative platform, and you can read all about it here.

And you can read everything we know about the major parties’ promises at the CBC Platform Tracker.

See you back here in a few hours.

I’m a senior reporter following the Bloc Québécois campaign this week.

If politics is theatre, then entertainment industry veteran Yves-François Blanchet really leaned into his roots during this morning's news conference.

While mocking Carney's speech, Blanchet imitated a hypnotist's cadence. "Your eyelids are getting heavy; you like fossil fuels," he repeated three times in answer to a question about whether the national interest supersedes Blanchet's proposal to protect all Quebec environmental laws from federal infringement.

Fielding another query about the newly released Conservative platform, he accused it of “hocus pocus,” and said, “Elon Musk, sors de ce corps,” likening the Conservatives' cuts to the controversial DOGE initiative south of the border (the rhyme does not quite translate smoothly into English, but it is effectively an exorcist's chant urging the American billionaire to leave a body).

But the biggest magic trick Blanchet will have to pull off is still ahead of him — urging as many Quebecers as possible to check BQ at the ballot box. Polls have had him on a slight upswing this week, but even with the bump, the CBC Poll Tracker still projects 10 Bloc seats could disappear.

Poilievre has promised in his platform to maintain existing dental care coverage, plus agreements on pharmacare and child care — all programs that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has projected a Conservative government would cut.

“Do Canadians honestly believe that Pierre Poilievre will keep these programs?” Singh said during a campaign stop in Vancouver. It’s unclear at this point whether Poilievre will let new users, and not just those who are already covered, access the programs.

“He’s fought against them. He’s opposed them. And now we’re to believe that he’s somehow going to defend them? I mean, I think people know what Conservatives do,” said Singh.

There’s some economist name-dropping happening in the chat today, as Carney defends his credentials against concerns about the spending outlined in the Liberal platform.

A few reporters noted that Trevor Tombe, an economics professor at the University of Calgary, wrote yesterday that “the entire fiscal trajectory of the federal government is now pointed in a potentially unsustainable direction.”

Asked outright if Tombe is wrong, Carney had this to say in French: “Yes, and I have more experience than he does.”

The Liberal leader defended his plan, saying his government is focused on reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio — a figure that Tombe projected would actually increase by 2027, before dropping slightly in 2028. Carney also reiterated a plan to slow the rate of growth in government spending to two per cent from nine per cent.

An estimated 7.3 million people cast a ballot during the four-day advance voting period from April 18-21, Elections Canada said today.

That’s a new record and a roughly 25 per cent increase from the number of people who voted in advance polls in the last federal election in 2021.

Elections Canada said it is putting together a breakdown of advance turnout in each of the country’s 343 electoral districts, which will soon be available on its website.

As my colleague Janyce McGregor pointed out, however, we are still missing some important context. We don’t know how much the registry of electors has grown since 2021.

Canada’s population has risen since then — so to understand how significant the 25 per cent jump is, we need to know not only how many more ballots were cast, but also the share of total eligible voters the number represents.

We’ve reached out to Elections Canada for more information.

Carney, after giving a general overview of his own platform, criticized Poilievre’s — saying the Conservative leader’s plan for Canada is to “cut, destroy and divide.”

Poilievre’s plan includes “a lot of magic numbers,” Carney said. He claimed a Conservative government would maintain child care and dental care for people who already have it, but wouldn’t offer it to others beyond that, creating “two types of Canadians.”

The Conservative platform isn’t explicit on whether it will offer the programs for new users.

“These numbers are a joke. We aren’t in a joke. We are in the worst crisis of our lives,” Carney said, adding that Poilievre’s plan is to “cut what Canada needs.”

The Liberal leader is currently facing questions over his own plans for spending amidst concerns over the federal deficit.