Angry in the Great White North

The Liberals have released their campaign platform.

Oops.

I mean Ralph Goodale released his budget.

Darn.

What I meant to say was Ralph Goodale delivered an "economic and fiscal update", which in addition to updating all of us on the economic and fiscal health of the country, also introduced new spending, which means it's really a budget, but new spending that will only happen if the Liberals are re-elected in the imminent election, which means it's a campaign platform.

Got that?

The platform is full of goodies, since Ralph Goodale forgot to carry the one when he was calculating the surplus last year:

One year ago, for example, Goodale's last economic and fiscal update projected that the surplus for 2005-06 would be $500 million, followed by $900 million in 2006-07. Monday's document revised those figures to $8.2 billion and $9.2 billion, respectively.

Wow. That's a lot of ones to forget to carry.

Will the government give this money back? A bit of it, sure:

He boasted that individual Canadians will save up to $325 on income taxes in the first year covered by the changes, seeing bigger refunds as early as next spring.

The documents show that a two-income family of four earning $60,000 would pay $499 less tax in 2006.

So two parents working, kids being raised by daycare (government-run daycare soon enough), over half their combined salary of $60,000 disappearing into income tax, sales tax, special taxes (gas excise tax, taxes on alcohol, etc), surcharges, and user fees, and they should be happy to get $325 back.

What's more frightening? That the Liberals think that they can get away with this, or that there is a fair chance that they will?

This nonsense about a half-billion surplus turning into eight billion because of "higher projected corporate and personal income tax receipts and lower public debt charges" must stop. We need something like the Government Accountability Office the United States:

GAO exists to support the Congress in meeting its Constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.

Accountability describes the nature of GAO's work. GAO helps the Congress oversee federal programs and operations to ensure accountability to the American people. GAO's analysts, auditors, lawyers, economists, information technology specialists, investigators, and other multidisciplinary professionals seek to enhance the economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and credibility of the federal government both in fact and in the eyes of the American people. GAO accomplishes its mission through a variety of activities, including financial audits, program reviews, investigations, legal support, and policy analyses.

Integrity describes the high standards that GAO sets for itself in the conduct of its work. GAO takes a professional, objective, fact-based, nonpartisan, nonideological, fair, and balanced approach to all of its activities. Integrity is the foundation of reputation, and GAO's approach to its work assures both.

Reliability describes GAO's goal for how its work is viewed by the Congress and the American public. GAO produces high quality reports, testimony, briefings, legal opinions, and other products and services that are timely, accurate, useful, clear and candid.

Can you imagine the sheer stark terror someone like Ralph Goodale would experience if a group of outside professionals audited the finance department numbers to arrive at the real state of the Canadian economy and of the government's finances?

Can you imagine how utterly devastated the Liberal Party would be if it was unable to play these games with tax money in order to buy elections?

Can you imagine any Canadian government being held up to the standards of accountability, integrity, and reliability?

Stop imagining. The Conservatives should promise to create a version of the GAO and give that oversight power to Parliament. Parliament should have oversight on these numbers, and not allow itself to be dictated to by the Finance Minister. Clearly our current one can't even add.