Liberals claim Conservative will create deficit

The Liberals were claiming that Conservative promises will create a $12 billion deficit over the next 5 years. If that's true, then the Liberals will be right behind them. According to the CBC, Liberal promises total $59.4 billion, while Conservatives are promising $65.5 billion. That's without the cost of the 50/50 plan. About half of university students and almost all college students will be in first or last year in any given year. In 03/04 there were 990000 university students and I'll estimate 255000 college students (This is a very conservative estimate, since Red River College in Manitoba as 30000 students). That's 750000 students getting $3000 per year, or $2.25 billion per year. This plan isn't supposed to happen for another few years, but that's still another 4.5-6.75 billion for their 5 year plan. That puts them very close to the conservatives at about 64-66 billion dollars over 5 years.

So, why isn't Martin fessing up to his own deficit creating promises? There are a few possible explanations:

1) While Martin's promises total about $65 billion, he's not planning on keeping most of them anyways, so we'll see even higher surpluses from him.

2) As per usual, Martin is hiding billions of dollars so that when the surplus is suddenly a lot bigger than expected, he can look like a hero. There's actually more than enough surplus funds to cover the promises of both parties.

3) The Liberal version of Tory numbers are incorrect, either on purpose or by accident.