Independently unverified

The Conference Board of Canada has qualified its conclusion that the Cons' platform can be sustained within a balanced budget, as some of the elements within the Cons' platform were never included in the plan submitted for evaluation:

Paul Darby, deputy chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada, originally concluded that Stephen Harper's Conservative platform "is affordable in each fiscal year from 2005-2006 through 2010-2011."

The Conservative party promoted that conclusion last week as evidence its election platform had been "independently verified" by the Conference Board, an Ottawa-based think-tank.

But Darby says the version of the platform he was given to vet didn't include a Conservative party health-care guarantee which states patients will be transported to another jurisdiction if they can't get timely care at home.

It also omitted a Tory platform promise to redress the so-called "fiscal imbalance" between Ottawa and the provinces.

The Conference Board's representative noted that since those platform planks weren't costed, he assumed that they weren't serious commitments from the Cons. But the Cons themselves have claimed otherwise, justifying the lack of any current numbers for these commitments based solely on the fact that their amount would remain to be negotiated.

It may be fair to say that it's tough to know the amount of those commitments in advance. But a budget predicated on a zero cost for those items is bound to look a lot different when any real numbers are put in place. And that means that the Cons' "independent verification" has really only confirmed that the Cons can't keep their promises without going into deficit or passing along the cost to Canadians in other ways.