Liberals grade themselves high on several election promises

New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant is giving himself and his government high marks for keeping promises made during the 2014 election campaign although the self-evaluation avoided grading some of the party's key financial commitments and generously assessed the successful completion of others.

"We are on track to fulfil 98 percent of the commitments we made in 2014 to New Brunswickers," said Gallant at a press event in Monctonon Monday.

"I think that demonstrates we work very hard in ensuring our commitments are going to be honoured."

Flanked by government-produced charts that delivered mostly a campaign-style message, Gallant presentedan evaluation of 153 commitments the party claims it made in the 2014 Liberal election platform "Moving New Brunswick forward."

According to Gallant, 149 of those have either been kept or started, a success rate of 98 percent.

"We thought it was important going into the campaign season that we update you on where we were as a government in implementing the commitments we made to New Brunswickers in 2014," he said.

But not included in the evaluation were a number of financial commitments Liberals made in 2014.

In its platform, the party outlined six years offinancial targets for itself, including eliminatingthe province's deficit by its fifth budget and generating a $111 million surplus in its sixth neither of which is happening.

Job growth promises

In her latest budget speech, delivered in January, Finance Minister Cathy Rogers projected a $124 million deficit for a fifth Liberal budget, a $79 million deficit in a sixth and balanced finances not coming until budget seven.

That's significantly worse than what was proposed to voters in 2014 but did not count as a broken commitment in the party's self-evaluation because deficit promises weren't graded at all.

Also not graded were job creation numbers and a campaign promise that 5,000 would be generated in the first year of a Gallant government with a "guarantee" of 10,000 new jobs after four years,

Statistics Canada reports the province gained 2,800 jobs during the first 12 months of Gallant's government but only 800 more since then.

Liberals argue they did create the promised jobs, but employment losses in the private economy disguised their achievement. Either way, the issue does not appear in any form on the report card.

Generous grading

Among commitments that do appear,grading was often generous.

For example, government credits itself with keeping a 2014 commitment to "explore opportunities to export NB Power's energy surplus" by creating a new electricity export corporation.

However, according to the utility, its exports have fallen by $160 millionmore than 40 per centover the past four years.

Similarly, the report card says a number of promises to "make post-secondary education more affordable" were also kept, even though school actually became more expensive for thousands of students.

According to New Brunswick's public accounts, overall student aid declined $11.7 million in the fiscal year endingin March 2017, even with the introduction of free tuition for low income students, because of the cancellations of other programs.

Other supposed successes,like ensuring "the independence of medical officers of health" prompted animateddebatesinside and outside the legislature about whether that was the true effect of government reform.

Conservative MLA Bruce Fitch, who attended the report card event, gave it a failing grade.

"You can take every promise and argue back and forth for a long time (if it was kept)," said Fitch who claimed the press conference was Liberal Party, not New Brunswick government, business.

"They're using government resources to try and convince people to vote for them again," he said.