By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, March 19, 2007
It is no secret that even with the odd tax break that is thrown to the hard working taxpayer, taxes are way too high. Now the tax and spend politicians who are seeking to increase their take rather than reduce their uncontrolled spending have developed a new technique. They take more money from the beleaguered taxpayer but refuse to call their cash grab a tax.
This little trick was pioneered, albeit unsuccessfully, by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. During the 2003 provincial election campaign, Dalton looked Ontarians straight in the eye and said that they wouldn't pay one penny more in taxes under a McGuinty government than they were already paying. Then after coming to power with a majority government, McGuinty imposed a hefty health tax on the suckers who had marked their x's beside the name of their Liberal Party candidate. No, no, no screamed Dalton; this isn't a tax, it's a health "premium". This difference was not lost on the many provincial government employees who, back in the days when Ontarians did in fact pay a health premium, had clauses in their collective agreements that made the employer responsible for the payment of those premiums. In some of these collective agreements, no one had bothered to remove the outdated clause. The employees were jumping for joy at their good luck until Dalton cried, no, no, no; this isn't a health premium; it's a tax.
McGuinty wasn't able to pull this "it's not a tax" scam off but that hasn't prevented others from following in his footsteps. Federal Liberal leader, Stphane Dion announced last week that if (or more probably, when) the Liberals get back in power, he's going to impose a carbon tax. In keeping with the times, this carbon tax is not really a tax. Dion plans to impose hard emission caps on the electricity generation, oil and gas and energy intensive sectors and these caps will be in line with Canada's commitment to the Kyoto Accord. Companies that exceed their caps will have to pay $20 a tonne, to be increased to $30, into a "special" Green Investment Account. Companies will then be allowed to withdraw up to $10 a tonne that they can use to fund new green and big brother approved initiatives. The amounts that are not so withdrawn will be used to fund other green projects in an attempt by the fear mongers to save the planet from certain destruction. True to form, Dion is denying that this is a carbon tax; the type of tax that he was opposed to when he ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party only a few months ago.
As John Ivison pointed out in his National Post column, most companies will just pay the $20 and carry on with business as usual. And Steffi's battle cry of "Make the polluter pay!!!" is of course a crock because these companies will merely pass their increased costs on to the end consumer. Despite the fancy rhetoric, Dion's plan to take money from these industries and spend it on other green schemes is a tax – nothing more, nothing less. In the end, the $20 per tonne will be paid for by the taxpayer and not the evil and ultra rich oil companies. It's nothing more than a proposed tax increase and no amount of fancy talk that Stphane is picking up in his English as a second language class is going to change that.
Meanwhile in the city of Toronto, the city mothers are trying to decide what products and/or services to add increased charges on in order to finance their uncontrollable spending. Late last year, they were given new taxing powers and despite election time denials that they were in no hurry to use them, they are now in a hurry to use them.
But these new charges will not be called "taxes". Rather they are being referred to as "tools". They are revenue tools that will be used to fix potholes and do all the other things that we dummies thought that our tax money was supposed to be used for. So if you happen to go to a Toronto liquor store one day and find that your favourite adult beverage has just gone up by 5 per cent, remember; it's not a new tax, it's a tool. The only tools that this city really has are the people that take up space around the council chamber.
All of this would be really funny if it wasn't going to cost us so much money. But the public knows what the politicians think we aren't able to figure out – that a tax by any other name is still a tax.
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