Spot the Mistakes

A fun game for kids are those "Spot the mistakes" pictures where you can find places where the artist has drawn people doing things incorrectly and kids get to pick up on others' mistakes.

A less fun pastime for adults is the "Spot the mistakes" game that comes with every Liberal press release.

Recently the acting Liberal Finance Minister decided to write a six paragraph letter to the editor in defense of the Grit tax plan. Unfortunately he left out about 10 more paragraphs (if he really wanted people to have the whole story).

Some of the gems in his letter include:

"It is true that we modestly increased taxes in our first budget" - well modesty is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

"When we took office, independent auditors showed us ... we were facing a potential deficit of $400 million". Yes, the Grits did hire the accounting firm of Grant Thornton to tell them, based on a worst case scenario, how bad could the province's books get? And they did say, if the Liberals were to completely fail as a government the deficit could reach $400 million.

But what actually happened is that because of the good financial management New Brunswick had over 7 years with Bernard Lord the year end budget was more than balanced. In fact when the Liberals announced their first budget (the one with all the tax hikes) they said there would be about a $35 million surplus for the year before instead of a $400 deficit. But as if their credibility wasn't already in doubt, when the actual Auditor General got finished with the books, it turned out that the last Bernard Lord budget resulted in a $237 million surplus. Whoops. Better not talk about reality when we have a report we paid $400,000 for that talks about fantasy numbers instead.

(Interestingly, the Liberals have never released the full Grant Thornton Report to the public, only the Executive Summary)

Acting Minister Keir's tall tale in the TJ keeps on delivering however, when he writes "In 2007 we increased personal income taxes by approximately $50 million. This year we have lowered them by $118 million...". Did you miss it? That's right - there was a whole year that took place between 2007 and this year which is 2009. How much was collected by the government in personal income taxes in 2008? We don't know because Mr. Keir conveniently leaves that page off his calendar.

But not to be a total Scrooge, Minister Keir does give some credit to the PC Opposition for being right about the highest earning 1,300 New Brunswickers getting the most tax cuts. But in an effort to downplay the amounts he says those 1,300 richest New Brunswickers "will still pay 5.2% of total all income tax in the province" down from paying 6%.

Gee, only a 0.8% reduction makes it sound like a pretty small tax cut, eh? Well consider that this year NB will collect more than $1.2 Billion in personal taxes. If the richest 1,300 contribute 6% of that that means they pay $72 million of the total. Thanks to the Liberal tax plan those same wealthy few will get $8 million in Liberal tax reductions to split between them, or about $6,000 per individual.

I wonder why Keir did not compare that to Premier Graham's recent visit to Dieppe where he was bragging about his great tax plan that is going to save a family there about $10 a week...