TORONTO -- The New Democrats are pitting a former Saskatchewan finance minister against the incumbent federal minister in his central Toronto riding.
Tom Mulcair announced Friday that Andrew Thomson would carry the orange banner to challenge Conservative Joe Oliver, and said he'd take Thomson's record over that of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government any day.
"The NDP's Andrew Thomson offers the people of Eglinton-Lawrence something that Joe Oliver hasn't -- a record of balanced budgets," Mulcair said as he introduced the party's newest candidate.
As finance minister in Saskatchewan, Thomson brought in big tax cuts in 2006 and engaged in a skirmish with the federal government over equalization payments.
Thomson's candidacy is a clear effort to beef up the NDP's credibility on the economic front -- as is Mulcair's other promise: to strengthen the office of the parliamentary budget officer.
He said the NDP would protect the budget watchdog from political interference and force government departments and agencies to make financial information available.
"We'll remove the prime minister's power to fire the parliamentary budget officer and make them an independent officer of Parliament, like the auditor general," Mulcair said. "We'll make transparency the law so that future governments can't hide financial information from Canadians."
Harper promised greater accountability and transparency in the budgeting process and to require ministries disclose information to the budget officer, "but he's failed to deliver on every single one." said Mulcair. "Stephen Harper went out of his way to undermine the independence of the office, fighting the parliamentary budget officer in court to prevent the release of budget details."
The NDP leader also said testimony from Harper's former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, at Mike Duffy's trial, shows many people in the prime minister's office knew Wright cut a $90,000 cheque for the senator to pay back expenses billed to taxpayers.
"Mr. Harper would have us believe that these were rogue elements within his office who did this without letting him know anything about what was going on," said Mulcair. "But the thing, is if they were out of control and not reliable people ... how come he's kept them all in his office? That's just not credible."
Mulcair also lashed out at Harper for gutting environmental protections and easing the approval process for projects like the Energy East pipeline, which he said ended up making it harder, not easier, to get them approved.
"Stephen Harper poisoned the well," he said. "He thought he was helping these companies get their projects faster, but in fact not one of them has gotten off the drawing board."
The NDP would introduce a new approvals process for big energy projects and would start over again with Energy East, added Mulcair.
"You can't say 'Yes' to Energy East or any other project right now because the public simply can't have confidence (in the process), he said. "So the first thing we'll do is put back the process, and re-start Energy East under that credible process."
Mulcair had only one other campaign event scheduled Friday, a photo-op with the red-hot Toronto Blue Jays as the open a series against the New York Yankees.
