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Opposition parties slam Jim Flaherty’s good news economic update

Leave it to the opposition parties and the staunchest Harper critics to find folly in Jim Flaherty's Fall economic update.

On Tuesday, Canada's finance minister told an Edmonton crowd that the country is poised to generate $3.7-billion surplus in 2015.

"We're on track to get back to balance in 2015, without raising taxes or cutting investments in health care and social service transfers, as promised," Flaherty said in a statement.

"Balanced budgets keep interest rates down and mean that taxes will stay low, maintaining Canada’s position as an attractive place to invest and ensuring sustainable social programs for our children and grandchildren."

[ Related: Flaherty says deficit years will end with a $3.7-billion surplus in 2015 ]

The unexpectedly high surplus means that tax cuts could be on the horizon. As explained by the Globe and Mail, the Tories — prior to the 2011 election — promised to introduce income splitting for tax purposes, an adult fitness tax credit and increasing the amounts that Canadians are allowed to put into tax-free savings accounts.

It's hard to argue with all that — isn't it? Especially coming out of one the largest global recessions in history.

But the opposition parties — whose job it is to 'oppose' — did.

Here's some of what they came up with.

Liberal Finance Critic Scott Brison took his beefs to Twitter.

The NDP's finance critic said Flaherty's update was nothing more than a public relations exercise ahead of a 2015 election campaign.

"This government's track record on economic projections has not been good. Last year they were out by one-third in their projections so their forecasting has not been good," MP Peggy Nash told CBC's Power and Politics.

"We believe in balancing the books over the business cycle the question is at what point do you do that? Economists have said there's nothing magic about attaining balance in 2015 — there's nothing magic about that date except the election.

And how they're balancing the books right now is coming at the cost of many many thousands of jobs in not only the public sector but the private sector. [And] coming at the cost of services that are hurting Canadians. Ask the veterans."

[ More Politics: Ontario court ruling reignites debate about mandatory minimum sentences ]

One of the more 'creative' criticisms against the Flaherty's update came from the left-leaning Broadbent Institute.

They do a solid analysis of questioning the government's statistics here but they also seem to imply that the government is somehow using tax policy to push for traditional families.

The Conservatives laid the groundwork on Tuesday to extend income splitting for married and common-law couples, with confirmation in the economic and fiscal update that a balanced budget is coming in 2015.

Social conservatives love the idea because they hope it encourages women to stay at home and take care of the kids. You know, just like the perfect middle-class family from the 1950s. It amounts to a tax policy that discourages mothers from entering, returning to or remaining in the workforce.

Let's take a closer look at this "family-friendly" idea.

The largest share of the benefit would go to high-income families where one partner is in the top tax bracket and the other has no earned income (think Leave it to Beaver). The Conservative approach to income splitting would provide no benefit at all to single-parent families – even though more than a quarter (28%) of all children live in single-parent families. The same holds true for families where both partners work and have incomes below $43,561.

That's a lot of criticism for a $3.7 billion surplus budget (which is probably the envy of much of the developed world) and impending tax cuts.

Everybody — as they say — is a critic.

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