The New Democrats expect their leader Tom Mulcair to propose spending another cent of gas taxes on municipalities. This will be proposed to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) at its meeting in Edmonton tomorrow. Despite the New Democrats suggesting that it is a dramatic offer and it will certainly garner some polite applause but it is the wrong message to the wrong audience.
You can hardly expect good pass-along of the news to municipal voters when better than 80 per cent of Mulcair’s Edmonton audience are Conservative or Liberal supporters. Municipalities are the minor league training grounds for the federal political parties. And it is those with higher ambitions who value connections they can make at FCM meetings.
If it was Prime Minister Harper or Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau making that offer it would get far better air play back home.
But it is an offer that has pitfalls for the one making it. To begin with it is going to be passed on to municipal gasoline users—which are any of us who drive. If it is that easy to hand off some of the gas tax, the offer can remind us that it is just as easy to increase it. And this is despite the average taxpayer having a hard time getting his or her mind around the fact that a penny per litre on the gas tax adds up to over $400 million in the federal treasury.
The only problem with this offer is that it is really small potatoes when you look at the overall infrastructure assistance requirements of Canada’s municipalities. Most experts are going to say “Ho-hum.”
And with most voters failing to understand the offer and most experts seeing it as a waste of breath, Tommy Mulcair is again shooting blanks in the election game.
But you have to appreciate the rhetoric. It really sounds wonderful when Tommy Mulcair says “Dedicated, predictable and transparent federal funding would help municipalities plan to meet their priorities while creating tens of thousands of new jobs in local municipalities.” That is what the media says he is going to say.
Oh well, we know what federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver is going to tell our municipal minders. Oliver has already promised lots of money in four or five years if everyone just votes Conservative. Since that is not too likely, the main interest will be in Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s offer. And maybe he will surprise us with an offer everyone can understand.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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