March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton said his party would support bigger deficits to help the economy get out of recession, because “bold action” is needed.

Layton and Thomas Mulcair, the party’s finance spokesman who will help lead a task force on the recession’s impact on the middle class, criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper in an interview today for taking “half-measures” that won’t help the economy.

Canadian lawmakers earlier this month approved Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s budget, which projects C$84.9 billion ($69.1 billion) in deficits over the next five years. The budget measures, which include money for roads and bridges and cuts in personal income taxes, aim to jolt the world’s eighth-largest economy out of its first recession since 1992.

“We absolutely believe” there must be a “second iteration of a stimulus response,” Layton said in his Ottawa office. “If that means that there has to be in the context of a crisis a deficit situation, then we’ll be supportive of that. But there’s got to be a plan to get out of it.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper “is trying to kid Canadians, that somehow everything is going to be fine without us taking bold action,” Layton said. “He’s saying, we don’t need bold action, just little sprinklings of this and that, little half- measures over here.”

Layton said the government should offer a “green bonds” program, which would allow Canadians to invest in clean-energy projects, and rebuild the social safety net with policies such as public childcare services.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alexandre Deslongchamps in Ottawa at adeslongcham@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: March 23, 2009 15:20 EDT