Parties' lack of costed platforms prove they think voters aren't paying attention

Wednesday’s French-language federal leaders’ debate was marked by a conspicuous absence. Ditto Thursday’s English-language debate. And it’s likely not the one you’re thinking — yes, the Green Party was disinvited to the debates last-minute for failing to meet the criteria for participation, but just as jarring was the absence of costed platforms from any of the parties that did participate. 

Indeed, worse than jarring, the refusal to present these costed platforms as election day nears shows how much parties think voters care about platforms. Worse still, they might be right. Because the trend is still disappointing.

During the debate on Wednesday, moderator Patrice Roy of Radio-Canada made mention of the absence a few times. When discussing proposed tax cuts, which the Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democrats are all promising, Roy noted we couldn’t know how the parties would pay for them because we didn’t have the full costed platforms.

Mark Carney and the Liberals have promised to release their platform before advance voting ends on April 21. During the French-language debate, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said his party’s platform would be out in the coming days. The NDP plans to have theirs out this weekend. As it happens, the Green Party is the only one to have released a costed platform to date.

The timeline for releasing platforms means voters, the media, and civil society groups will have a scarce few days to evaluate them before voting. Many, in fact, will have already cast ballots by mail or in advance polls. The message from at least some of the parties is clear: they are either using their scarce resources elsewhere or prefer to tightly control drips of information, strategically released, giving voters mere peeks into what they might do, how, and how they’d pay for it. 

If parties respected voters, they’d give them more up front so they could make a considered, fully educated, critical decision about whom to support. If voters respected themselves more, they’d demand it, and punish those who don’t deliver.

Parties will blame the short election period, the so-called snap call, and delays in getting a costing review from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Their reasons only partially hold up. 

The PBO delay is a genuine concern. While the election has been coming for a long time and each party, except the Liberals, has the same leader as they did a year ago, the PBO is only permitted by law to start costing chosen platform promises, at party request, as soon as the writs are issued. The parties can prepare ahead of time, but some big changes, such as, say, Donald Trump’s trade war and a potential recession complicate things. The “snap” election excuse would be less compelling, since the call was telegraphed long in advance and, either way, there would be a vote by fall 2025. Parties had time to prepare. The Greens managed to, as have others in the past. 

During the 2021 federal election, the Conservative Party under leader Erin O’Toole released a platform on Aug. 16, the day after the writs were issued. It wasn’t yet costed by the PBO, but it was 160-pages filled with promises, ideas, and dollar figures. And that was during the pandemic, when the country was still dealing with COVID chaos. The Liberals waited until Sept. 1, just 19 days before the vote, but still far earlier than this year. Both were out before the debates, while the NDP waited until after.

As the French-language debate went on on Wednesday night, some comments popped up online from observers suggesting that parties shouldn’t even be invited to the leaders’ debates unless they have detailed spending plans. It’s an interesting idea, if difficult to implement. 

In that case, parties might choose to sit out the debates altogether. The dirty secret of platform releases is that parties don’t seem to think voters care all that much about them – and they may be right. But their opponents do, so may be hesitant to make themselves a target by giving out too many details too soon while risking having their ideas stolen. It’s easy to make big promises; it’s much harder to make them with numbers attached and explanations of how you’re going to pay for all of it, or what you’re going to cut from the budget to make it all work. 

We shouldn’t force parties by law to release costed platforms on a specific timeline, or at all. It’s up to voters to judge, and punish, those that don’t. In the past, they haven’t. Now, it’s even less likely they will; when the main parties converge on a common refusal to share this information, voters are left with few options to punish them for the contempt they demonstrate. 

It’s a frustrating reflection of the increasing cynicism of our politics. We ought to be offended by the refusal to give us the information we need to make an informed decision, and our failure to demand they do. We ought to call that failure out time and time again. We ought to make our displeasure, and higher expectations, known and hold parties, and ourselves, to a higher standard.