The attached table provides a comparison of the net costs of the platforms of the three major political parties. We have not included the April 2015 Budget/Parliamentary Budget Officer’s forecasts of the surplus over the next four years, given the uncertainties with respect to the current economic environment.

For the Liberals and New Democratics, the figures come directly from their costing of their election promises.  These numbers are not expected to change between now and October 19^th.

We have made some adjustments to their numbers.  For the Liberals, we have only shown the net cost of replacing the UCCB, CCTB, and NCBS with the Canada Child Benefit, as a Use of Funds, rather than showing them on a gross basis as both a Use of Funds and Source of Funds.

For the New Democratics, we have included their commitment to increase international assistance (ODA) funding to 0.7% of Gross National Income over the next ten years. It is not included in their costing document. In addition, we do not believe that there will be any net savings from reallocating unspent P3 Canada funds to Infrastructure Canada. This is just a transfer of funds from one government organization to another.

In addition, the New Deomcratics do not include the various initiatives affecting Employment Insurance Benefits as a Use of Funds and the freezing of Employment Insurance premium rates at $1.88 per $100 of insurable earnings rather than letting them fall to $1.49, as specified in the April 2015 Budget, as a Source of Funds.  This has the effect of raising both the Use of Funds and Source of Funds by $5.5 billion in 2017-18 and beyond.

The Conservatives have yet to release a detailed costing of their election promises. The numbers presented were derived from the Backgrounders accompanying their announcements. As such, the numbers should be considered preliminary and subject to revision.

Although the Conservatives have made fewer announcements than the other parties since the election call, their policy platform really began last October.  One can reasonably argue that their platform consists of announcements made immediately prior to the November 2014 Update, the announcements made in that Update, the announcements made in the April 2015 Budget; and the announcements made during the election. As result, their “election promises” total about $12.5 billion by 2019-20, roughly in line to that proposed by the other parties. Their platform was largely “financed” by the surpluses projected in the November 2014 Update and the April 2015 Budget, rather than having to come up with new Sources of Funds, as is the case for the other two parties..