Here’s Jean Charest on last night’s episode of Tout le monde en parle. Overall, a pretty good performance. Where Charest really shined was when Guy A. asked him why Charest’s finance minister was going around talking about a $2.3-billion surplus when the auditor-general found a $5.8-billion deficit. Apparently, the difference comes down to accounting methods, an explanation for which Charest made a believable case–especially compared to, say, the case Stéphane Dion made for the Green Shift on the same show just a few weeks ago.
Still, it’s a little odd that the goverment doesn’t use the same accounting methods as its auditor, no?