Liberals unveil $8B campaign platform

OTTAWA – The Liberals have unveiled their long-awaited campaign platform — and the $8-billion price tag that comes with it.

Leader Michael Ignatieff brandished the document, clad in a bright red cover reminiscent of the 1993 Liberal Red Book platform, at a campaign event Sunday in Ottawa.

The two-year, budget-style platform shifts government spending to Canadian households — a “family pack” of spending measures, Ignatieff said — and nation-building projects while raising taxes on the business sector.

“You know about family packs when you go to the supermarket — they gotta be good value for money,” Ignatieff said during an elaborate, town-hall style event that featured pre-recorded statements from Liberal candidates and questions from the public.

“We’re offering these policies to Canadians and saying, ‘We can deliver these practical benefits to Canadian families without raising your taxes.'”

The 94-page Liberal document promises a permanent home-energy retrofit program, assistance to family caregivers, a community “Heroes Fund” for fallen firefighters and peace officers, and a new Canada Service Corps.

It also features a number of measures already announced, including a $1-billion a year in student aid grants, expanded Canada Pension Plan benefits, a billion-dollar fund for more early learning and child-care spaces, and a $1-billion Family Care Plan for those with seriously ill or aging relatives.

The plan involves hiking the corporate tax rate back to 2010 levels, an end to tax breaks for oilsands development and a cap on stock option deductions — moves the Liberals say will generate more than $9 billion over two years.

Conservative critics wasted no time assailing the plan as classic tax-and-spend politics that Canada can’t afford.

“We must remain focused on what really matters to Canadians — creating jobs and completing the economic recovery,” said Jim Flaherty, finance minister in Stephen Harper’s cabinet.

The Liberals offered up $4 billion worth of promises in the campaign’s first week alone, Flaherty said. “Michael Ignatieff’s election platform will raise taxes, kill jobs and put our economic recovery in jeopardy.”

Ignatieff said a Liberal government would balance Canada’s books four years from now, slightly ahead of the Conservative budget projections laid out two weeks ago.

Not to be outdone, Stephen Harper staged a high-energy campaign event — Sunday announcements are a rarity for the Tories — where he promised to immediately double the children’s fitness tax credit to $1,000.

A Conservative government would also introduce a $500 fitness tax credit for adults once the federal budget is balanced, Harper said.

“A re-elected Conservative government will enact both of these measures before the end of our next mandate, because our approach is clear — when we can afford it, we will lower your taxes,” Harper said during a visit to an Ottawa gym.

An expert panel will decide which activities qualify for the credit, Harper said as a young group of aspiring martial artists kicked and punched the air behind him.

The kids program is slated to cost the treasury about $145 million a year, while the adult program carries an annual price tag of $275 million.

However, Harper imposed the same conditions on the adult program as he did on measures to ease the family tax burden he announced last week — it won’t be implemented until the deficit, projected at $40 billion, is eliminated.

The Tories say that won’t likely happen before 2015-16.

The detailed Liberal platform comes unusually early in the 36-day election campaign, mirroring the Liberals launch of their 1993 campaign Red Book.

That document was also delivered in a budget-style media lockup at a downtown Ottawa hotel — a stratagem designed to lend an air of credibility to the policy blueprint.

Conservatives didn’t wait for the Liberal platform to be revealed before attacking it. Cabinet minister John Baird has already labelled it as too expensive.

NDP Leader Jack Layton started the day at a sugar shack in Gatineau, Que., with a warning to Ottawa about health care.

The next round of health talks with the provinces will happen in 2014 and Layton said Canadians shouldn’t trust those negotiations to the Harper Conservatives.

He restated the party’s long-standing promise to hire more doctors and nurses.

Western Quebec has had a chronic shortage of family doctors and often people have been forced to seek treatment across the border in Ontario.

The ridings targeted by the NDP are held by the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals. Layton vowed to use the upcoming health-care talks as an opportunity to press for change.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe is travelling to Quebec’s Eastern Townships, while Green party Leader Elizabeth May remains in her B.C. riding.

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