You had to know that the Harmonized Sales Tax was going to come back into the limelight and bite Ontario’s Premier McGuinty on the ass. Now there is going to be a call for referendum legislation in Ontario to enable people to challenge the government’s tax laws. Just six weeks before the provincial election, the timing is bad for McGuinty.
It is the fault of those people out in Lotusland. The British Columbia electors voted almost 55 per cent against the harmonized tax that had been implemented out there. They not only voted to change back to separate provincial and federal sales taxes but they are going to lose the $1.6 Billion bribe that the federal government paid to get them to do it. This will cost B.C. voters more than they have bargained for.
But nobody has ever accused B.C. electors of voting in their own best interest. This is the province that voted in various forms of provincial Social Credit governments. It used to totally confuse pollsters as when the experts would ask people why they voted as they did, nobody would admit they voted for their new government. In federal elections, all bets are off west of the Rocky Mountains.
You would think that McGuinty would have a free pass with both opponents—Horwath and Hudak—admitting that they would not cancel the HST. He does, in effect, but not with the voters. His problem is that he and his Finance Minister are going around insisting that the HST is good for business in Ontario. The reaction to that is voters are saying: “That’s all very well. Let business vote for you!”
What nobody seems to understand is that the HST in British Columbia and Ontario was never planned nor dreamed up by the provincial governments. It was conceived by the Harper government and sold by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and carried out by the two provinces, Liberal governments. They bought Flaherty’s blandishments. They accepted Flaherty’s bribes of our money.
If Ontario voters had given the proper level of government credit for the HST, the Harper government would still be a minority government.
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Copyright 2011 © Peter Lowry
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