I think Mulcair's plan to maintain a balanced budget was quite reasonable.  As for taxes, actually both the NDP and Liberals promised to raise them, they just disagreed.  The Liberals promised to raise the top tax bracket from 29 to 33% while NDP promised to raise corporate tax rate from 15% to 17%.  Considering Canada's combined provincial+ federal for both is already above the OECD average both were bad ideas although Mulcair's probably less so as it at least we would have stayed out of the top 10 on corporate taxes whereas with Trudeau's tax hike we are now the 7th highest in the OECD for top rates whereas we were 13th out of 34 before.  He should have though not promises more social spending.