Liberals claim Hudak's 'million jobs plan' is grossly inflated
Will Campbell, The Canadian Press Published Saturday, May 24, 2014 12:09PM EDT Last Updated Saturday, May 24, 2014 4:19PM EDT
TORONTO -- Liberal Finance Minister Charles Sousa is accusing the Progressive Conservatives of using "voodoo math" to colossally inflate the number of new jobs a Tory government would create.
The Conservatives have made jobs the centrepiece of their campaign, promising to create half a million additional jobs over eight years with their cost- and tax-cutting policies
They'd hit their "million jobs" target by tacking that number onto the 523,000 new positions expected from normal economic growth over the same time period.
But Sousa said Saturday that PC Leader Tim Hudak's plan is riddled with mathematical inaccuracies and numbers that simply don't add up.
Sousa pointed to a Conference Board of Canada report commissioned for the Ontario Tories that helps underpin their employment projections, and said that it uses a different definition of employment than Hudak's plan -- resulting in what the Liberals call an eight-fold overstatement on jobs.
"In other words, Hudak didn't double count. He counted them eight times," Sousa said.
Sousa's own party has come under fire for questionable calculations in the past, particularly on its estimates for how much it cost to cancel two gas plants in the Toronto area in what the opposition parties have charged was an attempt to secure Liberal seats in the last provincial election.
The Liberals originally claimed the cost of scrapping one of the plants in Oakville would cost $40 million, but an investigation by the province's auditor general found the decision will cost at least $675 million, and possibly as much as $810 million.
Sousa, however, brushed off questions about how voters could trust Liberal math on the PC's platform.
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Liberals claim Hudak's 'million jobs plan' is grossly inflated