By Reality Check Team on April 12, 2011 5:59 PM
Categories: Leaders' debate
Debate's on and we're off to our fact-checking pile of facts and figures.
First up tonight was Conservative Leader Stephen Harper answering a question about corporate taxes and how he would justify them.
Ready for the recession?
It quickly turned into an attack by Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe, who charged that the Conservatives were unprepared for the recession in 2008, when they introduced Jim Flaherty's fiscal update in November 2008.
That was the statment that led to the prorogation of Parliament and the attempt to form a coalition between the Liberals and NDP.
Harper said his government was in close consultation then with other G8 countries about the recession and how to respond with a stimulus package.
But at the time, Flaherty said: "We may have a technical recession when the next quarter is put with this quarter. It may be that both quarters will be slightly negative for Canada," Flaherty said. "At that point we will have had a technical recession."
A few months earlier, he said the Conservative government will not go into deficit to cushion the economy from the slump in the U.S., the global credit crunch, or the strong dollar.
Canada and jobs
In his defence on handling the economy, Harper said the Canadian economy has created more than 480,000 new jobs - more than were lost during the recession.
That's true if you measure from trough to peak. But looking at the job situation over the longer term, Statistics Canada says there has been a net increase of 53,000 jobs between October 2008 and March 2011.
That's due to an increase of 64,000 part-time jobs but a decline of 11,000 full-time jobs since the recession began.
More on the economy
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