2019-14 Federal election 2019: Where do the parties stand on taxes and deficits?

The Globe and Mail has an excellent explainer on the fiscal proposals of the four federal parties (Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Greens).

You should read the article before you go out to vote. And vote you should.

A few comments:

as we mentioned before (in 2019-11) voters are not worried about the deficits. So parties promise higher spending, cutting taxes or both, and do not provide full calculation of the cost of the promises.

A bit of history 

Note that the first two graphs below show expenditure and revenue of the Federal government as percentage of GDP. That is the correct measure. The fact that federal debt is around $700 bln is not very interesting without comparison to the size of the economy.

By historical standards program expenses are not large, but have been trending up. Notice the increase caused by the Great Recession.

Revenues are also low by historical standards but rising.

Deficits are small by historical standards and are declining. Note that except for the period 1996-2007 we have almost always had deficits.