All three leaders have “promised” that their policy platforms will not lead to future budget deficits.  Apparently the one thing Harper, Trudeau and Mulcair can agree on is that deficits, no matter how small, are bad. This leaves raising taxes or finding new funds through reallocations of existing spending and revenues to fund their election promises.

For the Conservatives, other than blowing the surplus in 2015-16 (they still claim they will have a surplus), this should not be a problem since they already have funded most of their election promises (income spitting, enhanced UCCB; raising the TFSA limit; infrastructure and transit spending; cut in small business tax rate; extension of accelerated depreciation) in their April budget.

Stephen Harper has announced two new initiatives in the first two days of the 2015 election campaign. At this rate with 75 more days to go, Canadians could be bombarded with new promises before October 19^th.

The two initiatives – changes to the Apprenticeship Job Creation Tax Credit and a permanent Home Renovation Tax Credit - were aimed at the business sector and expected to spur economic growth. The Home Renovation Tax Credit will only come into effect in the middle of the next mandate (assuming the Conservatives are re-elected) and only if the fiscal situation can afford it. 

Panel 1 of the attached table shows that the total cost of these two initiatives would be a little over $400 million in 2017-18 rising to $1.6 billion by 2019-20. Panel 2 shows that the Conservatives still have substantial amount of funding room available and the net impact still leaves the budget in balance. Restoring the contingency reserve to normal levels would eliminate these surpluses completely.