OTTAWA - The Liberals say the Harper government's latest report card on economic stimulus spending is misleading.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's update boasts that the government has committed 97 per cent of this year's stimulus spending, up from the 90 per cent it cited in September.
And it says about 8,000 of more than 12,000 approved projects are already underway.
The government considers a project underway as soon as it has been put up for tender; it does not mean work has physically begun.
The Liberals say that, as of September, only about 12 per cent of the stimulus projects had actually started.
"It's full of weasel words," Liberal finance critic John McCallum said of the government update. "In terms of creating or saving jobs, it's shovels in the ground and construction work that counts, not commitments."
Just because over 90 per cent of the money has been committed, doesn't mean people are actually at work, he said.
"They do not tell us how many jobs have been created. We know they know, because the municipalities are required to submit that information, but they won't tell us."
Government officials have said they do not track the number of jobs created by the stimulus program, even though one of the key goals of the program is to put people back to work. But the Liberals have produced documents showing that the government does collect such data -- it just hasn't released it.
An independent investigation by The Canadian Press has shown that stimulus money was not targeted at areas of high unemployment. Rather, it has favoured ridings held by Tory MPs.
McCallum said Canada trails other G7 countries in economic growth and he lays the blame on the government's poor stimulus performance.
"Is an abject failure,which party explains why Canada is lagging other G7 countries in the recovery."
The pace of work on the stimulus projects is of vital importance to the federal government's plan to revitalize the economy. The Harper administration has staked its fiscal reputation on the ability of the stimulus plan to quickly create or maintain almost 200,000 jobs across Canada.
A fast and efficient rollout of the programs is essential to creating those jobs while the workforce needs them.
Under an agreement negotiated with the Liberals last spring, Flaherty is obliged to submit quarterly updates on how the stimulus program is working.
But the parliamentary budget officer has complained that the updates released so far are so lacking in detail and inconsistent in their format that they are not very useful.
