April 20, 2004
I hate to break it to you...
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Dalton McGuinty lied to you. He forecast that the cancellation Private Schools Tax Credit save the government $500-million a year (or $425-million by 2006 - depending on the pamphlet you read).
It turns out that the Credit only cost the government $29-million in its first and only year of its existence. Let's do the math:
$29-million per year is 17.24 times less than the $500-million prediction by the Liberals.
$29-million each year from now until 2006 gives you a total of $87-million. That is 4.88 times less than they predicted.
Being a generous cat, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt - Liberal estimates are off by (nearly) a factor of 5.
Hmm, maybe they've messed up the deficit calcualtion too? Applying the 4.88 error factor to their prediction that the province will have a $5.6-billion deficit you get a deficit number of $1.14-billion. Isn't that roughly the same number the Tories had?
Okay, that really isn't sound analysis, but can we really trust the budgetary estimates of a government that misjudged this so badly?
Posted by maxthecat at April 20, 2004 09:43 AM
http://www.maxsmewsings.com/mt/archives/2004/04/i_hate_to_break_it_to_you.php