No, he’s not a drug addict. If he was it wouldn’t be much of a problem. Paul would just get his government to legalize whatever his drug of choice was. He only has a minority government you say. No problem. Martin could just take a few billion of your hard earned tax payers and pay the NDP to support him. and it wouldn’t be too difficult or expensive to get the NDP to legalize currently illegal substances.
anyone who saw the headline and automatically assumed that the word "addict" meant drugs should get with the times. after all this is the 21st century. Gone are the days when the word "addiction" referred solely to chemicals or other compounds that caused physical reactions when the body was deprived of them. Today, in order to justify people who like doing something when they are supposed to be doing something else such as working or going to school instead of being in chat rooms, the list of addictions has grown. Now we have sex addicts, Internet addicts, video game addicts and a slew of others. This is nothing more than attempt to rationalize what has become the mantra to many over the past 40 years — if it feels good, do it.
Paul Martin is a tax addict.
Two things have happened recently that have brought taxes into the spotlight in Canada, the land where many never give a second thought to the amount of money that all levels of governments take from its citizens. The price of crude oil has risen to record highs causing prices at the pumps to soar, which became noticeable when prices surpassed the psychological barrier of $1 a litre. and secondly, surprise, surprise, the anticipated federal government surplus for this year will exceed the amount that was forecast. One estimate is that the surplus this year will amount to a whopping $9.5 billion.
Many Canadians, led by groups such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, put these two together and are asking for reductions in the federal gasoline tax. It has been suggested that the temporary surtax of 1.5 cents per litre, brought in as a "temporary" measure to fight the deficit, should be eliminated. after all, we have not had a deficit for the past eight years. It’s not an unreasonable request. The government is also reaping the benefits of increased prices by the amount of GST they are taking in on gasoline and other oil-based products. GST is not just added to the price of gasoline; other federal taxes and the provincial tax are taxed as well. We should really be calling this tax the GSTT — the goods, services and taxes tax.
Paul the taxaholic and his underlings are using every argument they can muster to show how a reduction in taxes would devastate Canada as we know it. Finance Minister Ralph Goodale was first off the mark, saying that if the government knocked a couple of cents off the price, the big bad oil companies would just increase the price per litre and the savings would be gone in an hour. Even if this was true, no one asked Canadians who they would prefer to have getting this two cents. But then we never get asked anything. Both the government and the oil companies would probably use the money to buy private jets but at least the oil companies won’t spend the money buying Jack Layton.
This argument incorporates the idea that an amount taken off a litre of gas in the one to two cent range would be no big deal to consumers. This is the government that bemoans the fact that immigrant physicians come to Canada and end up driving taxis. The government does nothing to correct this and now many of them won’t be able to afford to drive cabs. How long will it take before people realize that this government cares more about hoarding big wads of tax dollars than they do about them?
Martin uses the argument that the taxes are needed for his new deal for cities. Great; mayors like Toronto’s David Miller can use the windfall to build basketball courts for killers and to give huge increases to his union buddies as they try to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the least amount of work done in an hour. at a minimum, there is absolutely no valid argument why the 1.5 cent a litre deficit-reduction tax should be kept on the books. Other than the fact that the Liberals don’t want to their precious tax money reduced. The goal of the government seems to be to be able to bring in a surplus that is larger than that of the year before.
Paul Martin is addicted to taxes. It wouldn’t be so bad if so many Canadians weren’t addicted to Martin’s Liberals.