Toronto-Dominion Bank Chief Economist Don Drummond — a former mandarin in the Department of Finance in Ottawa — believes the Conservative government plan to pay for some campaign promises by finding ways for Ottawa to save money may be a bit ambitious. In a report published by the Bank yesterday, Drummond says “the savings required are heroic, far surpassing what was identified by the Expenditure Review Committee for the 2005 Budget but more modest than that of the watershed Program Review in the 1995 Budget.”
During the campaign, the Conservatives promised to find $22.5–billion in savings over five years. Drummond (picking up on a point the Liberals tried to hammer home during the campaign) said the Conservatives offered few details during the campaign about how they would achieve those savings.
Drummond goes on to say that there are some other unexplained holes or assumptions in the Conservative plan. For example, he believes it will cost $500–million more than theTories originally estimated to make good on their promise to cut the GST.
“The magnitude identified in the Conservative Plan will not be easy to secure. It will certainly take more time than is available before the first Conservative Budget, which we believe is likely to be in mid-to-late April. That suggests that this budget will either plug in the assumed savings without identifying details, or the budget will only have a short timeframe, perhaps 2 years rather than the tradition in recent years of extending to 5 years.”
I had a chance today to ask Prime Minister Harper about this today. Here’s what he said:
Well, I can simply tell you that it's the intention of the Government of Canada and the new government to do two things. One is to deliver the commitments we made to Canadians and also to otherwise ensure that the Government of Canada lives within the means of the taxpayers. In terms of those means, as we said during the election campaign, outside of priority areas we intend to hold the Government of Canada to a general rise in spending that's no greater than inflation plus population growth in this country because, frankly, we can't grow our government faster than we grow our economy and it has been for the last few years. So, you know, I think this will be done … I don't see it as a major exercise. It will simply be part of an ongoing exercise to ensure that Canadian tax dollars are used wisely.