OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff will issue his own probation report on the Harper government's economic recovery plan later this month.
The self-appointed probation officer won't judge the government's performance solely on the basis of its own progress report, issued Tuesday.
Rather, Ignatieff said Wednesday he'll present a Liberal "report card" later this month, which will go through unemployment and employment insurance statistics "with a finetooth comb."
"We've been documenting for weeks that it's taking six, seven, eight weeks to get an employment insurance claim through. That's pushing some people into welfare," Ignatieff said.
"It's not good enough. It's this kind of stuff that we will do when we present our report card when Parliament resumes (March 23) after the break."
Ignatieff had demanded four periodic economic progress reports -- any one of which could trigger defeat of the minority Tory government -- as the price for his party's support for the Jan. 27 budget.
The first report, issued by the government Tuesday, had little actual progress to report given that Parliament has yet to approve either the budget implementation bill or several pieces of related legislation. Some bills have not yet been introduced and none are to go into effect until April 1.
In the Commons on Wednesday, Ignatieff pointed out that the government report makes no mention of the budget's promise to create 190,000 jobs.
Neither Prime Minister Stephen Harper nor Finance Minister Jim Flaherty directly responded, choosing instead to blast Ignatieff for the Liberal-dominated Senate's alleged footdragging on the budget bill.
Ignatieff retorted that the Senate will pass the bill by March 26 or 27, in plenty of time to go into effect by April. He charged that Harper is trying to create an "artificial crisis" in order to deflect attention from the fact that he has no plan to help the jobless, whose ranks are expected to swell when the latest unemployment rate is announced Friday.
"My only hypothesis is this economy's falling like a stone and he'd like you to write about something else," Ignatieff told reporters.
