KELOWNA, B.C. -- Tom Mulcair refused to criticize Alberta's New Democrat premier on Tuesday for racking up a $5.9-billion deficit, even though he is promising to balance the books if he becomes prime minister and has criticized the Liberals for their spending plans.
Asked about Premier Rachel Notley's government plunging into the red, Mulcair blamed her Conservative forerunners.
"It was very, very understandable in trying to clean up the mess left by Jim Prentice and all his predecessors in the Conservative party that the (Alberta NDP) was going to be facing a lot of challenges," the federal NDP leader said at a campaign event in Vernon, B.C.
"They're doing something unique in Canadian political history: They're actually doing what they promised to do."
Among those promises, he said, were a $15 provincial minimum wage and higher corporate taxes.
Alberta's government announced Monday it was on track for a record $5.9 billion deficit. Prentice estimated a $5-billion deficit in May before his party was defeated. The new figure reflects changes made by the NDP government, including new spending for health, education and social services.
Mulcair, who has slammed Justin Trudeau's Liberals for planning deficits of up to $10-billion for three years if elected, said the situations in Alberta and Ottawa were different.
"The federal NDP is running in a federal campaign, with the books that we have," he said.
"If we want to be able to do things like bring in affordable quality $15-a-day child care across Canada, we have to be able to afford it; so we're saying where the money is coming from, we're saying what it's going to be spent on."
The NDP has not released a full costing for its platform but Mulcair plans to scrap Harper's income-splitting strategy as one way to find savings.
Earlier Tuesday, Mulcair touted the NDP's plans to boost tourism as he toured British Columbia's wine country, a region hard hit by wildfires, drought and dwindling American visitors.
He promised to invest $30 million in Destination Canada over three years, and repeated a campaign pledge to cut the small business tax rate to nine per cent from 11 per cent.
He said Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut $24 million from Destination Canada - formerly the Canadian Tourism Commission - while spending $800 million on advertising to promote his own government.
"Many small businesses across Canada, and here in the Okanagan, depend on effective tourism marketing for a stable flow of U.S. visitors," Mulcair said at a winery in Kelowna.
"Stephen Harper is putting Canadian tourism jobs at risk."
Stephen Lecce, a spokesman for Harper, called Mulcair's claim a "misrepresentation."
"Our government announced a major new investment to attract more American visitors to Canada, and support job creation across the country," he said in an email.
In May, the Conservative government announced it would invest $30 million over three years in a new tourism campaign called "Connecting America."
The goal was to create or maintain about 2,900 jobs and generate an additional $400 million in incremental tourism revenue from an additional 680,000 visitors between 2015 and 2018.
Mulcair is hoping to boost support in B.C.'s southern Interior, a largely Conservative region where the NDP made gains in the 2011 election.
He has also been promoting his plan to boost training and equipment for emergency response amid one of B.C.'s worst wildfire seasons in memory.
