Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Campaign 2015: What the NDP, Conservatives and Liberals have promised

A look at the promises made to date in the federal election campaign, grouped by category. Want more information? Party platforms can be found on their websites: For more election coverage, go to timescolonist.
FedElxn Debate 20150917_5_2.jpg
From left to right, NDP Leader Tom Muclair, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, and Conservative Leader Stephen Harper are seen at various points during the Globe and Mail leaders' debate, in this photo illustration, on Thursday, September 17, 2015.

A look at the promises made to date in the federal election campaign, grouped by category.

Want more information? Party platforms can be found on their websites:

> For more election coverage, go to timescolonist.com/election

Taxation

Conservatives

• Cut small business tax rate to nine per cent from 11 per cent.

• A "tax lock" law would ban increases to federal personal and business income taxes, sales taxes and "discretionary payroll taxes" such as CPP and EI.

• Bring in a $2,000 tax credit for single seniors to help nearly 1.6 million seniors with pension income.

•  Provide a tax break on membership fees to organizations such as the Kiwanis, Lions and Royal Canadian Legion.

• Increase the value of the 15-per-cent non-refundable adoption expense tax credit to $20,000 from $15,000 and make it fully refundable.

• Raise to $35,000 the amount that first-time homebuyers can withdraw tax free from RRSPs to finance a home purchase.

• Extend the existing 15-per-cent mineral exploration tax credit first implemented in 2006, and create a new 25-per-cent credit for hard-to-reach mines.

• Bring in a permanent home-renovation tax credit, contingent on a stronger economy.

• Increase the apprenticeship job creation tax credit, first introduced in 2006 to create incentives to foster skilled trades, to a maximum of $2,500, up from $2,000, and extend it to include the third and fourth years of eligible training.

• Simplify the calculation of home-office expense deductions.

 

NDP

• Increase the corporate tax rate to 17 per cent from 15 per cent.

• Roll back the expansion of income splitting, except for seniors splitting pension income.

• Cancel a proposed doubling of the amount that can be deposited in a tax free savings account.

• Eliminate a tax loophole on stock options.

• Reduce the business tax from to nine per cent from 11 per cent.

• Bring in a $40-million tax credit for businesses that invest in machinery, equipment and property used in innovative research and development.

• Freeze EI premiums for the next four years and spend more on training, while increasing benefits for young people, so-called precarious workers and new parents. Ease eligibility restrictions for EI benefits.

• Allow self-employed artists to average their incomes.

 

Liberals

• Provide a refundable tax benefit of up to $150 for teachers who spend their own money on school supplies.

• Lower the federal income tax rate to 20.5 per cent on incomes between $44,700 and $89,401; raise taxes on the wealthiest one per cent.

• Bring in a new, tax-free child benefit to replace the Conservative universal child benefit.

• Change the rules to allow people to dip into their RRSPs more than once to buy a home.

 

Infrastructure

Conservatives

• Spend $200 million to expand high-speed, broadband Internet network across remote and rural areas.

• Support a new marine terminal in Montreal and an expanded cruise ship terminal in Quebec City.

• Finance key Asia-Pacific gateway projects in Western Canada.

•  Support major public transit projects including the Smart Track plan in the greater Toronto area and light rail transit in Surrey, B.C. and Ottawa.

• Improve Highway 5 linking Hay River and Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories.

 

NDP

• Invest $150 million over four years in a green municipal fund to help with sustainable local projects and cleaner transit.

• Create a National Housing Strategy that will include restoration of federal government investments dedicated to social housing and co-ops and provide incentives to build 10,000 new affordable and market rental housing unit.

• Bring in a 20-year transit plan to support municipal needs, with funding to reach $1.3 billion a year after four years.

• Provide an additional $1.5 billion a year after four years for municipal infrastructure needs.

 

Liberals

• Increase federal infrastructure investment to almost $125 billion, from the current $65 billion, over the next decade.

• Provide $1.5 billion for public transit in Calgary as well as unspecified financing for flood control measures in the city.

• Help fund a Montreal rapid transit expansion, as well as a light-rail project on the Champlain Bridge linking Montreal to the suburban South Shore.

 

Health care

Conservatives

• Continue support for the public health-care system and increase health-care funding to the provinces and territories.

• Renew funding for Brain Canada, a non-profit organization devoted to comprehensive neurological research with $100 million over seven years.

 

NDP

• Reverse a planned reduction in the rate of increase in provincial health transfers, due to set in two years from now.

• Provide $2.6 billion over four years and work with provinces to establish universal prescription drug coverage. Aim to cut drug costs by 30 per cent through bulk purchases.

• Spend $1.8 billion over four years to help provinces bolster health care for seniors. Expand home care for 41,000 seniors, create 5,000 more nursing beds and improve palliative care services.

• Invest $300 million to build 200 additional health clinics and spend $200 million on recruitment grants for health-care professionals. Devote $40 million to deal with Alzheimer's and dementia.

• Set up a $100-million, four-year mental health innovation fund for children and youth.

 

Liberals

• Spend $3 billion over four years on home care and improve access to and reduce the cost of prescription medications through bulk purchasing.

• Establish a pan-Canadian Expert Advisory Council on Mental Health.

 

Social policy

Conservatives

• Extend parental leave benefits under employment insurance, including extending the length of time mothers and fathers would have their jobs protected to 18 months from the current one year. Give parents the option of stretching EI benefits over 18 months, starting next year. Open a two-year pilot project to allow parents to earn self-employment income while on EI.

• Raise government contribution when low- and middle-income families invest in education savings plans.

• Increase the maximum annual Canada Disability Savings Grant for low- and middle-class families to $4,000 from $3,500.

• Better harmonize child car seat regulations with those of the United States to provide more choice and better prices.

• Commit an additional $10 million over five years to the Kanishka Project, which was established in 2011 to fund research into preventing and countering violent extremism.

• Add $40 million over five years for an existing federal loans program that offers financial support to new Canadians while they complete the foreign credential recognition process

 

NDP

• Spend $32 million over four years to ensure more northerners have access to nutritious food.

• Give $28 million for Sport Canada to help poor and disadvantaged youth to play sports.

• Invest $40 million over four years to restore cuts to shelters for women fleeing violence, creating or renovating 2,100 spaces in first-stage shelters and 350 spaces in transition houses.

• Increase the guaranteed income supplement for the poorest seniors by $400 million; return the age of eligibility for old age security back to 65 from 67.

• Create a million, $15-a-day child care spaces over eight years.

• Bring 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country by the end of the year.

• Convene a first minister's meeting to discuss expansion of the Canada and Quebec pension plans within six months of taking office.

 

Liberals

 

• Spend $40-million over four years on the Nutrition North program. Increase the northern residents deduction by 33 per cent to a maximum of $22 a day.

• Increase Canada Student Grants by 50 per cent to $3,000 a year. Allow students to wait until they're earning at least $25,000 a year before requiring them to start repaying student loans.

• Impose new restrictions on marketing unhealthy food and drinks to children.

• Ease rules to speed up family reunification for immigrants.

• Scrap the visa requirement for Mexicans travelling to Canada.

• Make employment insurance compassionate care benefits available to anyone caring for a seriously ill family member and make the program more flexible by allowing the six-month benefit to be claimed in blocks of time over a year-long period.

• Change labour laws to ensure that employees in federally regulated industries have the right to ask their bosses for flexible work hours.

• Bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees.

 

Law and order

Conservatives

• Create a formal list of criminal gangs, similar to what is done with designated terrorist groups.

• Put $2.5 million more a year into efforts to steer teens away from gang activity.

• Enact a law imposing two-year, mandatory minimum sentence for financial fraud over $5,000 with multiple victims, unless the offender pays full restitution.

• Establish new RCMP human trafficking teams in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg at an annual cost of $8 million for five years and renew the national plan to combat human trafficking for five years at a cost of $20 million.

• Bring in legislation to ensure that criminals sentenced to life are not eligible for parole.

• Toughen penalties for drunk drivers.

• Resurrect the "life means life'' legislation that died in the Commons when the election was called.

• Another $4.5 million a year, on top of the $22 million currently budgeted, for an RCMP team designed to crack down on illegal drug labs and marijuana grow-ops.

• Allot $500,000 a year over four years on a national toll-free hotline for parents to call to get information about drug use among youth.

• Spend $3 million a year on a Correctional Service Canada program to have prisoners build homes in partnership with Habitat for Humanity

• Expand federal laws that make it a crime for Canadians to head overseas to fight alongside groups officially identified by the federal government as a terrorist organization.

• Spend $9 million over three years to help the Office of Religious Freedom protect places of worship and religious artifacts targeted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

• Provide new money for child advocacy centres.

 

NDP

• Spend $250 million over four years to recruit 2,500 new police officers. Commit $100 million year thereafter to a recruiting program.

• Commit $7 million a year to a Joint Emergency Preparedness Program for disasters such as floods and fires and earmark an additional $2 million for emergency training programs.

 

Defence

Conservatives

• Add 665 personnel to Canada's special operation forces by 2020.

• Establish a Canadian Forces reserve unit in the Yukon.

• Add 6,000 people to the ranks of the Canadian Forces reserves at a cost of $163 million over three years.

• Re-establish College Militaire Royal as a full-fledged, degree-granting military university.

• Improve the earnings loss benefit for veterans with service-related disabilities or injuries by letting them earn up to $10,000 in outside work, without losing any government funding.

• Issue official veterans cards as formal proof of service to every member of the military who completes basic training and is honourably released.

 

NDP

• Reopen the maritime rescue sub-centre in St. John's, N.L., and reopen the Coast Guard marine communications and traffic services centres in St. John's and St. Anthony. Have coast guard search and rescue capabilities available at all hours.

• End Canadian participation in the bombing campaign against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

 

Liberals

• Sign the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which covers conventional weaponry.

• Scrap the purchase of the F-35 fighter jet and instead buy cheaper planes. Spend the savings on navy vessels.

• $300 million a year to reform veterans' benefits and delivery of services to vets

 

Jobs

Conservatives

•  Set aside $10 million a year to fund summer jobs in the trades for high school students.

• Aim to create 1.3 million net new jobs by 2020.

• Create a $100-million manufacturing technology demonstration fund available to large, pre-commercial projects in the advanced manufacturing sector.

•  Invest $20 million in the lobster industry over three years.

• Earmark $9 million over three years starting in 2016 for a tourism program to attract recreational anglers, hunters and snowmobiles from the U.S.

• Establish a not-for-profit agency in Burlington, Ont., to help develop new products and technology for manufacturing, with a budget of $30 million a year for five years.

• Cut "red tape'' for businesses stemming from legislation and policy rules in addition to regulations.

 

NDP

• Boost the forestry sector with $55 million for manufacturing facilities, $40-million for research and development, and $10 million to promote Canadian wood products abroad.

• Provide up to $100 million a year to create more than 40,000 jobs, paid internships and co-op placements for youth over four years.

• Invest an additional $90 million in the federal automotive supplier innovation program over the next five years.

• Create a $160-million, four-year fund to help small- and medium-sized aerospace companies adopt new technology and increase production.

• A $40-million tax credit for businesses that invest in machinery, equipment and property used in innovative research and development

• Invest $30 million over three years in Destination Canada, a Crown corporation responsible for promoting Canada as a tourist destination.

 

Liberals

• Put up $200 million a year for three years to help research facilities, small business incubators and exporters and invest another $100 million a year for an industrial research assistance program.

• Give $500 million to the provinces for skilled trades training, and devote $200 million for federal training programs. Set aside another $50 million to help aboriginal people improve their skills and job prospects.

• Spend about $1.5 billion over four years on a youth job strategy to help 125,000 young people find a job.

• Invest $200 million a year to develop clean technologies in forestry, fisheries, mining, energy and farming. Put another $100 million into organizations that promote clean technology firms.

• Reduce EI premiums to $1.65 per $100 earned from $1.88. That's less than the $1.49 rate that the Tories committed to in the 2015 budget, but the extra money would be reinvested, with $500 million going to the provinces for skills training.

 

Environment

Conservatives

• Allot $100 million over three years for a program to support crop science.

• Allot $5 million annually for programs to sustain habitats that support bird, moose and turkey populations, starting in 2017. Create a family bird-hunting permit and allow the use of crossbows for hunting birds.

• An extended partnership with the Pacific Salmon Foundation and $15 million to restore British Columbia estuaries.

 

NDP

• Spend $200 million over four years to help retrofit 50,000 homes and 15,000 apartments to make them more energy efficient.

• Put $100 million toward helping 25 northern and remote communities wean themselves off diesel generation.

• Launch a national cap-and-trade plan to combat greenhouse gas emissions. Provinces would be allowed to opt out if their efforts to bring down emissions are as good or better than those of the federal government.

 

Liberals

• Impose a moratorium on tanker traffic along the northern coast of British Columbia.

• Reinstate $40 million cut from the ocean science and monitoring program at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

• Increase protected marine and coastal areas to five per cent from 1.3 per cent by 2017, and to 10 per cent by 2020.

 

First Nations

Conservatives

• Bring in legislation that would let the Whispering Pine/Clinton Indian Band near Kamloops begin allowing people to own their own properties on the reserve.

 

NDP

• Commit $4.8 billion over the next eight years for aboriginal education

• Call a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women.

 

Liberals

• Add $515 million a year to funding for First Nations education, rising through the mandate to a total of $2.6 billion. Add another $500 million over three years for education infrastructure and $50 million more a year for a program that helps aboriginals in post-secondary education.

 

Trade

Conservatives

• Provide billions to help the auto and dairy industries cope with the repercussions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

• Set up a new trade-promotion office to help attract new business for exporters, paid for by reallocating other government resources.

 

NDP

• Refuse to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.

 

Culture

Conservatives

• Create an endowment fund for museums that would match the money the institutions raise privately, with a cap of about $15 million a year.

 

NDP

• Provide $60 million over four years to Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board.

• Loosen rules for grants from the Canada Council for the Arts.

• Establish a new $10-million digital content fund to support celebrations of Canada's 150th anniversary in 2017.

 

Liberals

• Provide $380 million in additional funding for the arts and undo Conservative funding cuts to the CBC.

 

Miscellaneous

Conservatives

• Aim to create 700,000 new homeowners by 2020.

• Add $40 million over five years for an existing federal loans program that offers financial support to new Canadians while they complete the foreign credential recognition process.

• Better harmonize child car seat regulations with those of the United States to provide more choice and better prices.

• Track the impact of home purchases by foreign, non-residents to ensure this doesn't skew the market against Canadian buyers.

 

NDP

• Give the information commissioner the power to force departments to release information to the public.

• Eliminate excessive fees above $5 charged by the government to access information.

• Pass a Consumer Protection Act that would cap ATM fees at 50 cents a transaction and create a gasoline ombudsman to investigate complaints about prices at the pump.

• Bring in a mixed-member, proportional representation voting system.

• Ensure that Canadians living abroad have the right to vote.

• Establish an Office of the Parliamentary Science Officer

• Balance the budget in the first year of an NDP mandate.

• Make the parliamentary budget officer a fully independent officer of Parliament and require government departments and agencies to make financial information available to the PBO.

• Create a payment-protection program for farmers who don't get paid if they sell their products to U.S. companies that go bankrupt.

 

Liberals

• Kill a planned toll system on a rebuilt Champlain Bridge in Montreal.

• Bring in a merit-based appointment process for the Senate.