Ontario's tax dollar gold digging

A relative of mine got a letter from the Ontario Ministry of Revenue demanding payment for an error on a business tax form made four years ago. Something that was allegedly rectified at the time. They asked me why the government was going after them when there are certainly bigger fish to fry. The answer is simple, small businesses are an easy target, and so are individuals.

The Ontario government is now sitting with the largest deficit in history. It has already levied the largest income tax increase in history, has increased sales taxes, has put up hydro rates, among other things. Yet the government still finds itself in the red and spending keeps increasing. Most of it goes to the public service payroll, the rest seems to be going to pet projects of the Premier. Few Ontarians seem to actually be benefiting from it.

The problem is the government, in order to pay the bills, will be clamouring for every penny they can get their hands on. This means going after any unpaid back taxes or fines, legit or not, with a vengeance. They won't be going after the big boys with their legions of lawyers either.

Consider this a warning when you fill out your 2010 taxes next April. Make sure you go over it with a fine tooth comb. Any mistakes you make could end up costing you dearly.

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Ontario's eco-fees may be unconstitutional

Did you watch the price of goods go up on July 1st? HST wasn't the only culprit. New "eco-fees" were slapped on a wide variety goods that the government thinks are environmentally harmful. This includes everything from potting soil to washing up liquid. Stewardship Ontario, an independent body set up by the Ontario Government, has levied these fees. The problem is, it can't.

Legal experts say the eco-fees are unconstitutional since they are legally considered to be a tax. The problem is only the legislature can levy taxes and only the ministry of revenue can collect them. It grows out of that whole "no taxation without representation" that got the Americans so hot and bothered 230 years ago.

Direct taxation is when the government passes a law in the legislature and announces it to the public. That's allowed by the constitution. Indirect taxation is when the government sets up an external body to levy and collect fees without informing or consulting citizens. That's what Stewardship Ontario has done. They are collecting fees for the government through businesses, who then pass the costs on to consumers. There was no vote on these fees. No hearings were ever held. No legislation was tabled. The body unilaterally decided to implement them.

The fees have been in place since 2007 when they were first levied on items such as paint. Nobody complained mainly because nobody knew they were there. At the time, only a handful of items were covered. The list has since ballooned.

Environment Minister John Gerretsen seems to think this is A-OK. After all, the McGuinty government thinks the lack of action by the public is a wholehearted endorsement of their policies. Dalton's dream team knows how to play the apathy of Ontarians like a well used Xbox.

Despite the lack of complaints, it still doesn't make the fees legal. Yet another sign that our governments have total contempt for the people they serve.

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Did you get your HST bribe money yet?

Look what came in the mail today. A lovely brown envelope from the Ontario Government stuffed with cash. My HST bribe... er... relief cheque. The figure came to the princely sum of $100 big ones.

Then I thought to myself. I have to fill up my car about three times a month to carry me to my two jobs. One is located across town, the other in downtown Toronto. It costs me on average $40 to fill up my Civic. That's $120 a month in fuel expenses. Come July, that jumps to $130, assuming gas prices don't spike. It's not a lot really but I think it's the principle of the matter. That cheque won't even stretch a year, assuming gas was my only HST applicable expense. In the mean time, the job market is still in the tank and my wages have not increased.

Anyone who believes the HST will create jobs, or that companies will pass "savings" on to consumers is a fool. Each time the government creates a so called "revenue neutral" tax, it becomes anything but. Remember the GST was supposed to be revenue neutral?

Any savings to businesses will be eaten up by their increased tax burden. They too will now have to pay tax on items previously exempt from the PST. Fuel is the big one. So it does indeed work out to be revenue neutral for them, not for the Government.

I'm no economist but I'd sure like to know how this is going to create jobs and save me money. Maybe they'll use the "savings" to build more plazas and stuff them with minimum wage positions; because you know $10.25 an hour part time is more than enough to live on.

This is the second time Dalton McGuinty lied about not levying new taxes. Ontarians' tax burden has spiked but services have not improved. All it seems to be doing is funnelling more cash to pay for the onslaught of civil servants the government is hiring.

Under McGuinty's leadership, Ontario went from an economic powerhouse to a "have not" province. That was even before the recession of 2008. The hole we're in now was caused by years of government mismanagement. While the recession did hit us hard, the government wasn't financially prepared to deal with it. That's why they have the HST. They can't raise income taxes any higher so the government is forced to nickel and dime people to recoup the millions they wasted. When the NDP says you're taxing people too much, you might have a problem. It's making us all live on a little less, for nought.

Coming soon, I'm going to completely revamp Martin's Mill News with a new design. I'm going to clean up some of the old articles as well. Get rid of pointless rants, fix up the rest. Similar to what I did with MMN Tech. Stay tuned for the new and improved site in the next month or so.

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...But Do I Get a Free Car?

I own GM now, apparently. I must say I feel wealthy along with my 32 million other shareholders who have just purchased 12% of a car company to the tune of $10 billion. Now, this seems great until I realized that I don't get a dividend for my stocks. In fact I don't get anything except an inevitable paycheque decrease thanks to the future taxes I'll have to pay for this colossal blunder. Steven Harper is pulling the "following orders" excuse as to why the government bailed out General Motors. According to the PM, they would not have done it had Obama not bailed out the US arm of the company, and it was only done to keep jobs in Canada. Fair enough but I cannot help but wonder whether it's just delaying the inevitable. All throughout the bailout negotiations, GM management and the CAW/UAW have taken an apathetic stance on restructuring. The CAW still considers being docked down to the same level of every other worker, blue or white collar, to be a major concession.

Now that two of the largest companies in the world have been nationalized, what's in it for the rest of us who are forking out this money? One leading bankruptcy lawyer noted that Chrysler will be unable to repay its loans to the government. What makes General Motors any different? It's simply putting good money after bad. GM has put a great deal of funding into the Camaro and the Volt, two cars which will supposedly save the company. Unfortunately, pony cars and hybrids aren't selling and the company has grown a reputation for having unreliable vehicles. GM's plan for profitability is relying on niche products, which may work for smaller companies or those in strong financial shape, but it's not viable in the long run. If this recession has done anything, it has shown that Keynesian economics, or rather the distorted version being used today, simply no longer works in modern economies. It's important to keep banks stable and inject cash into infrastructure projects to create jobs but Keynes to my knowledge never said anything about bailing out the failures of others. However, that seems to be the government policy de jour. The problem is that all political parties seem to be supporting this yet Canadians and Americans alike are not liking it one bit. The Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP have all been pushing for bailouts. Sure it keeps people working but at what cost? If GM collapses again in the near future, which to me seems inevitable, we'll be out double rather than just letting them fail now and worrying about EI. We've lived to survive another day but at what cost? We now risk governments micromanaging the economy and getting more bloated than ever before. Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan must be turning in their graves.

Steven Harper has failed on this issue but would Michael Ignatiff had done anything different, or Jack Layton? Already government deficit is ballooning out of control, both at the national level and in Liberal controlled Ontario. The United States is in no better shape. The two North American powers desperately need to return to the Reganomics model. While Canadians have criticized such models for cutting services and cutting back the "saintly" civil service, they worked; something that cannot be said for the hypergovernment models of today. Governments are simply getting far too big and too intrusive for their own good. We've been down this path before, and have always emerged worse off than when we went in. If we must suffer this, at the vary least I should get a free car; seeing as how I paid for it. I'll take a Corvette please, in black if possible.

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Americans Have It Good

I've never understood the gripes of our neighbours to the south about their country and our government. They complain about their taxes, their social services, their government. American liberals look to Canada with envy for our broad social network and "free" healthcare. I argue that Americans actually have it far better than Canadians do and that Canada is actually moving backwards as the rest of the world moves forwards.

Taxes are one of the most common gripes I hear about on online messages boards. Americans think they're paying too much. Back in April, Tea Parties were held by American conservatives protesting high taxes. They fear Obama is going to raise taxes to an unprecedented level to offer "Canadian style" social services. Canadians pay a vary steep price for our social services and I'm not sure we're getting anywhere close to getting our money's worth. So, it's worth comparing the two countries in terms of what we receive versus what Americans receive for our dollars. In Canada, people spend half their year working for the government. According to Wikipedia, my bible, Tax Freedom Day in Canada, the abstract date in which we start working for ourselves and not for the tax man, will land on June 14th this year. The United States has already passed their Tax Freedom Day, which landed on April 13th. The average tax burden of Americans, that is the percentage of money going towards the government from all taxes, state and federal, is 28.2% and is actually decreasing. For Canadians, the tax burden is 44.8% and climbing. Canadian taxes are over a third higher than they are in the US. To add to this, Canadians also make less money than Americans do. According to the CBC, the median household income of Canadians in 2005 was approximately $41,404 CAD, a figure that has not changed since 1980 when adjusted for inflation. Using today's exchange rate, that works out to be $35,179 US. (the rate then was similar to what it is now so it's just easier to use today's rate) By contrast, American median household income was $43,389 during the same period. Americans get to keep about $31,153.30 after taxes while Canadians keep just $19,418. Americans make more and get to take more of it home than we do. Of course I'm using pre-recession figures but we can assume that the large gap still exists.

Of course, Canadians have to take home less because we're paying for health care, right? Americans have a choice of health insurance and what they want and don't want to be insured. Canadians do not have that choice. We can't shop around for the best deals. In Ontario, $600 to $900 annually is collected in tax per person as a "health premium" on top of what is already being paid into healthcare from other taxes. It's worth noting that the socialized medical insurance plans don't cover eye, dental, drugs, physio-therapy, and medical supplies. Everyone is guaranteed health treatment but this often doesn't mean Canadians are entitled to the best care available. While wait times have decreased, average ER wait times are still six to eight hours for minor ailments and up to 19 hours or more for more serious conditions. People are often left on stretchers in the hallways of many urban hospitals because there aren't enough beds. Rural hospitals are being closed down in many provinces to cut costs. Wait times for diagnostic examinations such as MRIs and ultrasounds must be booked months in advance. Many Canadians lack family doctors, particularly in more rural regions but the problem exists in major suburban areas as well. While health treatment in the US is not equal across the board, Americans will usually receive faster service and treatment than Canadians do. While I don't have the statistic in front of me, the US government supposedly spends more per capita on health care than Canadian governments do.

Another incident of Americans having it better than we do in Canada boils down to something much simpler that effects us all on a daily basis; municipal services. I have a friend that lives in Fairfax, Virginia. To give you some idea, Fairfax is a medium sized town that's a suburb of Washington DC. It's like Streetsville would be to Mississauga; a town within a city. I was floored when she told me they get their garbage picked up twice a week. That's everything including recycle. By comparison, in Halton region of Ontario, where I live, garbage is only picked up twice a month while recycling is picked up weekly. In Toronto, residents have to pay for their garbage collection on top of already steep property taxes. Halton uses two trucks to pick up garbage and recycle while most US cities use one truck that can store both. Aside from better garbage collection, Americans also get mail delivery on Saturday. In fact, there was some controversy when the USPS was considering dropping weekend delivery due to the recession and increasing costs. Canada by contrast has never had Saturday delivery. For transit, the DC area features a robust subway system that reaches right out into the suburbs and runs trains all day. In the Toronto area, the subway only operates in the city and commuter trains only run during rush hours. It costs nearly $7 ($5.95 US) to get from outlying areas of the GTA to Union Station, one way regardless of time. By comparison, it costs about $4.50 US to get from far flung Fairfax to central DC during the rush, and $2.35 at all other times. Want to go further? Hop on the Accela Express, a Canadian built electric train that runs between DC and New York City at speeds of 200km/h. You could travel from Toronto to Kingston in 1.5hr rather than the three hours it takes for VIA's aging diesel trains. For those who know the area, Washington DC is hardly a model city. However, it still manages to pull off better services for average citizens, and for less money than we do here.

Canadians are getting ripped off when it comes to the level of services versus what we pay out. The high taxes wouldn't be so bad if we actually got what we paid for. Each year we're asked to give more while governments claw back services or simply leave things to fall far behind the rest of the world. So where is all this money going? Corruption, pet projects, and bureaucratic red tape are the primary culprits. Simple projects, such as constructing a highway offramp or building a badly needed railway grade separation, get tangled up in years worth of environmental impact and cost feasibility studies. At minimum it takes a year for any infrastructure repair project to get approval. The civil service chews up money as it it were going out of style, most of it going to their ludicrous salaries and benefit programs. Politicians spend it on their little projects, such as Toronto mayor David Miller's green initiatives which have sunk the city far into the red. Granted, Americans don't always have things better. Canada's schools are probably better than theirs and we do pay less for electricity. However, if we continue to waste money at this rate, Canada risks slipping further and further behind the rest of the developed world. We're paying a small and increasing fortune annually to the government, who keeps infrastructure and basic services at the level of barely adequate at best. It's high time we Canadians started holding our own Tea Parties. The government needs to know that if they expect us to pay out so much, we at least want our services to reflect that. As for the Americans, you guys really don't have it all that bad, even with Obambi as your new president. Anybody know where I can get a green card?

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New Tax System for Canada: The Party Tax

I was thinking about Michael Ignatiff's comments that Canada should raise taxes during a recession, and about Dalton McGuinty's 8% tax increase. People on the left seem to be all about taxes and are quite content to pay more. Therefore, I've devised a new tax system for Canada which I'm calling the Party Tax.

The Party Tax does away with all conventional tax systems such as tiered income taxes that vary depending on your income bracket. Instead, the Party Tax is a flat tax which is paid depending on who you vote for. Here's the formula.

Vote Liberal: Liberals enjoy paying taxes and don't mind when they are increased. In fact, I'd say they're eager to fork out more. They're the first to demand Canadians pay their fair share whenever the government spends too much on some harebrained scheme. I think they need to pay more of their fair share since they're responsible for most of those schemes. They can obviously afford to divert a larger portion of their income to the government than most Canadians do. After all, they're the ones who demand the most government expenses. Therefore, under the Party Tax, all Liberals would pay at least 50% of their income.

Vote NDP: The New Democrats are all about helping the poor and they like to spend like water as well. At least their causes are somewhat more noble if misguided, unlike the Liberals who love spending cash on their pet projects. NDPers are also technically fuctionally retarded so they shouldn't have to pay as much as their wealthier Liberal counterparts. All NDP voters would pay a flat rate of 45% of their income.

Vote Conservative: Conservatives spend money more sensibly so they can be trusted to invest their cash into the economy. Therefore, their money is not really needed for the government and should be diverted to the private sector, which employs most of the NDPers. (Most Liberals work for government or for a friend in government) Since they're pumping so much to keep the rest afloat already, they should pay less tax. Therefore, all Conservatives should pay a flat rate of 5% of their income.

Vote Bloc: The Parti for Quebec, Bloc members don't really care about Canada so why should they pay to take care of it. Instead, they should pay a flat rate of 100% of their income to the Quebec provincial government to keep their greedy "nation" afloat.

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CAW Signing It's Own Pension Death Warrant

Is Ontario legally, or for that matter morally obligated to ensure GM retirees are guaranteed a pension? CAW president Ken Lewenza thinks so, once again proving my theory that big unions are currently living on another planet. I got to thinking about my own parents who have recently retired. They're small business owners. Aside from the money invested in their business and in the stock market, they have no other money coming in. Since they are both under 65, they cannot even collect the pittance that is the CPP. They, like most other retirees, saw their savings plummet when the market crashed back in October. So through no fault of their own, they have less and less to retire on. There is no government safety net for them. To rub salt in the wounds, the CAW is now asking, no, demanding that Ontario tax payers pay for their pension fund should GM and Chrysler go under. The fund was never intended to support the massive number people should a large company like these two auto giants go under. There is only $100 million in the fund while GM is in the hole for $6 billion.

The threads are starting to unravel on this saga with each new story that comes out. There is a clear and present culture of entitlement within the North American automotive industry; stretching from the boardroom right down to those on the assembly line. Every single person employed by GM and Chrysler is equally at fault for the financial mess that the two companies are in. I know Lewenza is trying to protect his union members but to make such a crass statement that Ontario is morally obligated to shovel over tax payer dollars to their pensioners is just outrageous. It was the CAW that demanded, nay, forced the cradle to grave care that pushed pension costs through the roof in the first place. Of course GM executives are equally at fault for not reining in the union and not putting enough aside to pay for the expenses. However, the fact that Lewenza thinks that these pensioners are loosing through "no fault of their own" just shows how arrogant he is. So many other pensioners are being forced to go without yet the government only has a moral obligation to help the members of this one union; and they honestly expect the rest of us to pay for them? Socialism only when socialism is convenient for our group; that's the mantra of big unions. It is getting really difficult to feel sorry for autoworkers who are loosing their jobs when stuff like this comes out. They seem to think that they can keep operating at the status quo regardless of outside market forces and the stupid things they do. It's never their fault in their minds. It's GM's fault, it's Ontario's fault, it's the fault of consumers for not buying GM vehicles. No, never the CAW's. This is precisely why the government should not bail out the auto industry. Like I said in past articles, when you keep handing these idiots money whenever they screw up, it only serves to continue the culture of entitlement and arrogance that got them into trouble in the first place. Of course Dalton McGuinty will fold like a deck chair though. So far, no politician in this country has had the balls to take on big unionism, save Mike Harris. The auto industry needs to be allowed to fail if only to purge the idiocy that currently rules it.

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Top Ten Failures In McGuinty's Tainted Legacy

How do you write yourself into the history books as one of the worst leaders a province has ever had in its history. Simple, just follow Dalton McGuinty's legacy and you'll do fine. Here's a list I've compiled of some of the more notable events of the last five years.

1. Implemented the Largest Tax in Ontario History
McGuinty ran on a campaign promise that he would not raise taxes, even solidifying it in writing by signing an agreement with the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. In his first budget, he implemented the "Health Care Premium" so that all Ontarians would pay their "fair share" to hire more doctors and nurses due to a shortfall caused apparently by Mike Harris's cuts. The premium is roughly $900 per person per year and appears within your income tax. It goes into general revenue rather than a specific fund for health care. Health care services have arguably have seen little to no improvement despite the massive funding increase.

2. Put the Province in an Energy Shortage
Get rid of your old fridge, caulk your windows, replace light bulbs with the crappy twisty ones as stated by David Suzuki in the Powerwise commercials for the Ontario Government. When McGuinty was elected in 2003, he promised to close all of Ontario's coal fired generating stations by 2007 to reduce carbon emissions. However, there were no plans to build new power plants to replace them. It turns out that closing down just one major coal station, the Lakeview Generating Station, sparked a massive power shortage in the province. Ontarians were forced to put in "Smart Meters" as an excuse to charge you more for electricity and force you to conserve. (As a side note, the debt retirement charge on your hydro bill is actually a tax that goes into the province's general revenue. It is not used to pay down the debt of the former Ontario Hydro as claimed. This tidbit was obtained from publically available budget documents which provide a breakdown of tax revenue streams going into general revenue.) Large sums of money were wasted on conservation programs and buying power from out of province. Money which could have been put to retrofit existing power plants with clean coal technology. The rest of the coal generators are still open as of 2009. It would take more than a decade to replace the plants with nuclear power, a plan that was hacked out just last year, long after the coal closure deadline had passed.

3. Destroyed the Environment
McGuinty had a lot of egg on his face after the Oakridges fiasco. For a refresher, McGuinty had promised during the election to shut down a major housing development along the environmentally sensitive wetlands known as the Oakridges Moraine, near Holland Marsh. Unfortunately doing so was technically illegal since the contracts allowing them to build had been in place since well before he was elected. Being a lawyer, he should have known this. However, I suspect he knew all along and it was said simply for token populist purposes. However, it backfired and went down as his first broken promise; first of many. In 2005, the McGuinty Government passed the Places to Grow Act and the Greenbelt Act, apparently in order to prevent urban sprawl. In reality, the Places to Grow Act has accelerated it to the point of being out of control. Outlying GTA communities have been swallowed up by massive unchecked growth, putting huge tolls on their original residents and the surrounding environment. The Greenbelt Act is impotent at best and has led to housing developments almost up to the base of the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Plans even called for putting a highway on top of the environmentally sensitive cliffs at one point. Even Toronto is not immune. The city now has a street literally named "OMB Folly" as a monument to these laws. Environmentalism is only chique when it deals with fake issues like global warming and federally regulated safe pesticides. If McGuinty and the OMB had their way, they'd turn Ontario into ecumenopolis of cookie cutter houses.

4. Caught Buying Votes
An Indian-Canadian cricket club that had asked the province for $100,000 in taxpayer funding to establish their team. They surprisingly found themselves with a $1 million cheque mailed to them, authorized by the premier's staff. That's more than a little suspicious and not the first or only incident. $250,000 was given to build a massive Sikh temple in Mississauga. The owners of the Khalsa Darbar had lost their charitable organization status shortly before that, and had been linked to a radical Sikh separatist group in India. This was all part of an odd $32 million fund set aside for ethnic minority groups. A fund which had little to no fiscal transparency or accountability. Targeting specific ethnic groups, namely new Canadians citizens with free money, well, let's just say it's a little less than ethical. I wonder what the going rate for my vote is. I'm a little short on cash right now. See below for the reason why. The slush fund fiasco would have destroyed his hope of reelection if it wasn't for the incompetence of John Tory. Tory may be a nice guy, as people keep saying, but he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. More like a spoon.

5. Let People Go Blind but Put Breast Implants in a Guy
One of the first things the McGuinty government did was take away eye exams from OHIP coverage. These didn't cost the government much (a pittance of $80 a pop) but it has taken a toll on low income earners with eye troubles. I guess poor people don't need to see. Chiropractics were also delisted so I guess it's ok for poor people to be blind and have a bad back too. However, the government thought it was ok to allow sex change operations to be covered. So it's ok for poor people to be blind and have a bad back but at least they can go from male to female on the taxpayer's dime, and vice versa. Joy!

6. Nanny Statism
The McGuinty government has spent much of its time in office on developing petty bans. You can't put pesticide on your lawns, you can't smoke in the car, you can't own a pitbull, etc. Nanny statism is a tactic used to distract the public from real issues by creating issues out of non-issues. Did you get that? Good. Oh on the pesticides; what happens to all those people who do that for a living now that they're banned? I personally think we should have Liberals banned while we're at it.

7. From Have to Have Not
Ontario went into the McGuinty leadership term as the economic engine of Canada. Now the largest province by populaton is considered to fall under "have not" status and requires equalization payments for the first time in the history of the federal program. McGuinty actually positioned this as a good thing, because the government would now get the money from the feds "it deserves." I guess people loosing their jobs and recent university/high school grads not being able to find work is a small price to pay for "fairness". We're now below Newfoundland in terms of economic performance for God's sake. Ey's the by who built the ship, McGuinty's the by that sank 'er.

8. Created an Unfriendly Environment for Business
The federal government warned McGuinty to cut business taxes to encourage companies to stay. Everybody knew a recession at the time, except McGuinty. It was just like how he didn't know about the deficit in 2003 that everybody else knew about. There must be so sort of massive conspiracy afoot, that's the only explanation! Now many big corporations, such as Daimler Chrysler, and threatening to pull out of the province all together due to the high cost of doing business here. The government is now scrambling to throw money at them with no guarantees they'll remain in Ontario. This economic plan would be akin to me emptying my wallent into the toilet, fushing it, and expecting to retrive its contents from the sludge at the sewage plant a week later.

9. Raising Taxes During a Recession
According to Keynesian economics, which plays a big role in liberal theory, governments have two duties in regards to the economy. Raise taxes and save during good times, cut taxes and spend during bad times. The Ontario Liberals raised taxes and spent during good times, and raised taxes and spent during the bad times. Ontarians got a nasty surprise in the 2009 budget when they found out many staple goods would now be subject to an 8% sales tax due to harmonization. "Gee, nobody's buying anything because they have no money so you know what we'll do to fix that? We'll increase the sales tax and make them pay more!" This is just incredibly asinine.

10. Making Rae Look Fiscally Responsible
During McGuinty's years in office, annual government spending has tipped the scales at $18 billion. Rae's biggest budgets only managed to top $9 billion in the early 90s. When adjusted for inflation, McGuinty's budget is still $6 billion more than Bob Rae's! Once again this goes against Keynesian economics. McGuinty is trying to spend his way out of a recession but spent to much when times were good, so there's no money left. The province will be in deficit for six years, compared to the one year it was under Eves due to the Dot Com Burst and 9/11 crashes. It will take decades to repay that level of debt, and more government belt tightening if we manage to get someone with half a brain running the province again. Civil servants better start making their strike signs now before they're taxes so much, they can't afford coroplast and 2x4s.

Now for the top ten successes of the McGuinty Government.

1. ...........
I'd better get back to you guys on this one. I'm head first in the barrel as we speak, spatula in hand.

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The Foolishness of Tax Harmonization

Ontario plans to unveil in it's budget today a proposed plan to harmonize the PST and GST. I've talked about this issue before when Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty originally proposed the ideal. At first I just focused on those shopping out of province but the fact that many staple items would now be subject to sales tax did not occur to me at first. I make the food, I don't buy it. I guess I'd better start doing the grocery shopping to. The harmonized tax is now threatening to raise the price of staple items over $4. This would include things such as feminine products, housing, diapers, and many food products that were not subject to the provincial sales tax before. The prices of these basic items would essentially jump 8% overnight. To counter this, the government is proposing a $1000 grant to all families making under $160,000 combined income. Then why raise the tax if you're just going to givethe money back? I seriously doubt that most people are going to see this money.

It is incredably foolish for any government to be raising taxes during a recession, especially sales taxes. Large businesses argue that harmonizing the tax will save them money but ultimately it harms consumers in the long run. Lower income earners will now suddenly be forking out more and will likely get hurt the most. I can't help but feel that's a little bit ironic when Liberal governments repeatedly say they are out to help these people. A tax increase at this time makes little economic sense as it will discourage people from purchasing certain things, particularly housing which will now be taxed. For example, the price of an average house would increase $28,000, putting it beyond the reach of people who may have been able to afford it before. You cannot seriously expect people who are tightening their belts during a recession will keep buying things that suddenly cost a significant amount more.

Is anybody really surprised by how dumb this is? This is the same government that levied the largest tax increase in Ontario history when it slapped a $900 "Health Care Premium" on residents in 2004; after promising in writing not to raise taxes during the election. Spending has gone up to $18 billion per year and yet Ontarians have seen vary little improvement in services. Most of it goes to lucrative pay hikes for teachers and civil servants. Back in 2005, it was agreed that Ontarians are rapidly reaching their taxation limits. Cities are asking for more, the province is asking for more, and we have no more money to give them. Ontarians need an election sooner than later. Hopefully the Conservatives will elect someone with half a brain as their leader this time. Going up against the worst premier in history and his long record of destruction sould be a cake walk.

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Is the Economy Really That Bad?

I'm not an economist but I do have to know some things about the economy. I cannot help but wonder if things are really as bad as we're being told. The mortgage industry in the US collapsed and the auto industry has been hit hard, but that's it. Granted, they are vary big but they still don't make up the bulk of GDP in North America by themselves. A lot of the problem businesses out there; notable failures like US electronics chain Circuit City and Canadian telecom firm Nortel have been circling the drain for years. However, every day we keep hearing about companies who were doing just fine just a few months ago now "tightening their belts". Is this really warranted? Are people loosing their jobs needlessly? I say yes. Two things rule the markets: greed and fear. I think a lot of the current crisis is being driven by fear alone rather than actual numbers. There is a reason people used to call economic downturns "panics" before the Great Depression.

The markets are down because people panicked and pulled all their money out, allowing the high rollers to play games with your money, as they still are. Billionaire Warren Buffet has proven that you can be one of the world's richest men but still be a complete and total idiot. Each time he panics and shoots his mouth off, it makes things worse. Of course the bigger dummies are the ones that listen to him. A lot of it is poor management by people with the same mentality as Buffet who are simply too lazy to search for the root causes of their problems and instead just lay people off. The real victims are those who have just left school who cannot find work because these idiots keep playing games over who can get needlessly scared the most. These youths just starting to enter the workforce are not eligible to collect EI and if they can't find jobs, they're essentially screwed. Just stop, this is not another Great Depression, far from it. The economy is not as bad as they keep saying. People are still buying, trade is still going. The truth is, that if you have a job, you have nothing to worry about. This whole recession has been artificially created by fear and it needs to stop.

Now, I'm not a fan of government intervention in the economy but something needs to be done to stop these needless layoffs and to ensure those entering the workforce can obtain work. A solution would be to offer tax incentives to companies who hire, especially those who hire recent highschool and university graduates. If things are tight, there should also be tax incentives offered that encourages employees and employers to adopt programs such as job sharing to ensure people can at the vary least keep working and keep earning an income. While Liberals have balked at how much such incentives would cost, it would save a significant amount of money in the long run by keeping people paying taxes and not collecting EI and welfare. If that fails, governments should consider imposing tax penalties on companies laying off large numbers of non-seasonal workers unless they can prove it is absolutely necessary to ensure the business's survival. It's not a step I would want to take but it may be necessary to stem the panic. Sometimes we all need a little tough love.

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"Like Drunken Sailors": Cities Need to be Audited

Yesterday, Toronto released it's 2009 budget. Property taxes went up 4% but combined with other taxes the city now charges, the actual tax burden for Torontonians increased 10%. This is typical of many GTA municipalities. In Mississauga, property taxes increased about 4.4% but also came with increased service charges and transit fee hikes. Milton increased their property taxes by 6%. It's interesting to note that this is significantly higher than the rate of inflation would warrant. However, the quality of city provided services do not seem to be improving. Road building has been put on hold region wide, garbage collection is getting irregular, parks are getting dirty and untended, water quality is declining. Any resident of the GTA has to ask themselves where all this money is going if it's not being reflected upon in the services we receive.

Of course, then there's all the stuff you here about the colossal amount of waste that goes on at city halls across the region. Milton for example has spent several hundred thousand dollars to install a custom made glass wall, imported from Britain, in it's new town hall. Milton's mayor Gord Krantz jetted off to China last year on tax payer dollars to attend a conference along with other GTA mayors. Toronto's mayor David Miller takes the cake though for wasteful spending, including the multi-million dollar renovation of his own office, 70km of new bike paths that nobody wanted, 30 some odd new programs the city can't afford, a needless restoration of Nathan Phillips Square and Union Station, "green" hybrid transit buses that break down, his jet setting to international environmental conferences to push the city's green initiatives, and hugely bloated office budgets. One of this expenses included paying $80,000 for a woman to water plants in councilors' offices. I wish I had that job. Halton region uses three trucks to pick up garbage, green bin, and recycling while US municipalities use only one. Each truck is manned by two men. Toronto's NDP council has given into union demands for exorbitant wage hikes, which the city cannot afford. This equates to vote buying. The city has refused to contract out work, which would save money, and has replaced current contracted jobs with public service union ones. This is only the tip of the iceberg for questionable spending at the region's city halls.

Lets face facts here, we have a major problem on our hands when it comes to how Ontario's municipalities spend tax dollars. Every time the federal or provincial budget comes out, you hear the mayors screaming for more funding from the higher levels. It is true that cities are now paying for things that they didn't used to, such as welfare, but there is just so much waste, it's mind boggling. Right now, we are in a recession. Money is tighter than ever and yet the cities are asking for more and more tax money. Money that people just don't have. A lot of people are being forced out of their homes simply because they cannot afford to pay what the city wants. This is part of why Toronto has seen a massive exodus of residents in the last year. Housing is cheaper outside of the city.

Cities say they have a massive funding shortfall and cannot afford to pay for services, and therefore have to raise taxes by huge amounts. However, there is a great deal of questionable practices going on. It's time the Province stepped in and did something about the issue. Ontario needs to appoint a series of independent auditors and ombudsmen to dive into the books of our municipalities in order to get a clear picture of what's really going on. It's obvious that they cannot keep their own houses in order and unfortunately, this is the only way we're going to get some answers and solve the problem. Additionally, Ontario needs to repeal the City of Toronto Act to remove the special taxation powers and extended terms the McGuinty government foolishly gave to municipalities. All it has done is open the door to more mismanagement and corruption. Lastly, please, get out there and vote in your next municipal election. One of the reasons that city councils aren't being transparent to citizens is because nobody votes, so they don't care what they do. By not voting, you're basically giving these people who get in again and again free reign to do whatever they want.

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McGuinty's HST Plan Nickle & Diming

When I need to buy computer parts online, I usually buy then from British Colombia for a couple of reasons. First of all, Ontario doesn't have any decent places to buy parts. Secondly, it's cheaper, namely because I don't have to pay PST on items purchased out of province. That is, provided that my province doesn't have a harmonized sales tax. HST basically combines GST and PST into one tax that is collected by the federal government, where they then give the PST cut to the provinces. Dalton McGuinty is putting forth the idea to implement HST in Ontario. He claims it will help Ontario businesses. He is right in a sense since it will make online shopping outside of Ontario more expensive, thus forcing consumers to adopt more local means. However, I see it as just more nickle and diming from the tax obsessed premier. The tax basically implements protectionism within your own country by punishing people who choose to purchase things from another region. It all boils down to just another scheme to get more tax dollars from Ontario residents.

This is pretty typical for the McGuinty Liberals though. It is extremely easy to implement and the feds are ultimately the ones doing most of the work. Liberals like quick fix, one hour photo solutions to complex problems. Lets face it, most Ontarians are not regularly buying things out of province. It punishes a minority while not fixing the economic slump that it seeks to address. However, to more feeble minded individuals, it gives the illusion that McGuinty is doing something to fix the economy when he actually isn't. Of course he should be encouraging investment in Ontario but taxation is not a good way of doing so during a recession. The appropriate way is to launch promotional campaigns, cut business taxes, and make Ontario an overall attractive place for business; rather than nickle and diming residents and throwing huge sums of money at dying industries.

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Toronto's Trash Under Millerist Socialism

Toronto, a city in decay. Well, perhaps that's a little strong but there is no denying that the city seems to be on a decline. The roads are falling apart, historic buildings in the downtown look dilapidated and are now towered over by high rise condos, violent crime is on the rise across the city, the water front looks like a garbage dump, businesses and people are leaving, services are being cut, the city's finances are bleeding red ink, and taxes have increased dramatically. All this going on yet Toronto's mayor and his inner circle of NDP oligarchs seems to be totally unaware of it. When David Miller was elected mayor of the city in 2003, he promised, broom in hand, to clean up city hall. So far, this has not happened. In fact, things have gotten much worse at Nathan Phillips Square. It seems that each week, we hear of yet another corruption allegation or ludicrous program announced. Most recently, a memo regarding garbage collection problems was only set to councillors who were the Mayor's allies. This isn't the first time that the city has misled or deliberately withheld information. In fact, this sort of activity seems to be business as usual. That's how the city of Toronto operates under Millerist socialism.

I'd like to focus this discussion on Toronto's most recent boondoggle: its new garbage collection scheme. David Miller is another bandwagon environmentalist who wants to make Toronto the "greenest" city in North America. Miller has run into a great deal of "unforeseen" problems with this initiative, which he has been working on since day one. One of his first accomplishments after being elected mayor was getting the city sued for breech of contract after shutting down construction on a bridge to the Island Airport. Since then, we've seen a whole host of ludicrous green plans such as banning pesticides. Unfortunately, the pesticide bans are putting allergy sufferers through a living hell and have marked a resurgence in blood sucking bed bugs within the city. The chemical used to kill these dangerous insects is banned under the program. Since then, we've seen tree cutting on your own property banned, a proposal to introduce recycling police, another proposal to ban plastic grocery bags, and a failed attempt to force Tim Hortons to stop using paper cups and plastic lids.

The new garbage program has to be the icing on the cake though. The plan, which was forced through council, was developed to divert waste from landfills in order to fulfill Miller's green initiative. The idea was to turn Toronto into a city that recycles the most. Well, that's what Toronto residents were told. The real reason behind the plan involves money as usual. Currently, the City of Toronto has no local landfill to dump its garbage. It is working on opening a small facility in St Thomas ON in the near future. However, most of the garbage is currently trucked across border to Michigan. As one would expect, this costs a bundle. Trucking companies charge per ton so reducing garbage makes financial sense. The waste diversion initiative covers for the fact that the city was too lazy and incompetent to find any long term local solution to its garbage problem. Instead, Miller decided that it was simply easier to punish Toronto's citizens by finding a new revenue source for the cash strapped city, made that way principally due to mismanagement. The city now charges individual residences an annual fee for garbage collection on top of their property taxes. The fee depends on whether people want a small, medium, or large bin. (I don't have the exact cost figures in front of me, but I believe it is over $150 for the smallest bin. Please correct me if I'm wrong) If you want to put out garbage, you have to buy the bin. As if getting your property tax funded garbage collection service taken away was bad enough, the implementation of the new program has been less than smooth. 40,000 Toronto households are still without their bins. The city claims this is due to a backlog at the factory that makes them. Instead, the city has handed out pink tags for people without bins to put on their garbage bags to ensure collection. No pink tag, no collection. People have complained that the tagging system is confusing. Reportedly, Toronto marked bins have shown up in Florida. Additionally, there are reports of bins actually getting stolen. Illegal dumping is also on the rise. It's not as if these were unforeseen problems. At the vary least, there wouldn't have been had the city taken their time to plan it out properly. Instead, they made a knee jerk reaction to a problem that should have been dealt with years ago before it got this bad.

Then there was the now infamous email incident I mentioned above. When pressed on it, Miller lashed out at a Sun reporter and denied he knew anything about it. Others involved denied any knowledge of the email or why it was only sent to Miller's allies. So much for cleaning up city hall. More denial, more cover ups. Lastman had the MFP scandal, Miller has countless under his belt. Miller's scandals aren't as delightfully juicy though. In fact, they're downright scary at times. If Toronto isn't the most mismanaged city in Canada, I would certainly be frightened to see the one that is.

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Green Was the Flavour of the Month

For about the last thirty years, the environment has shifted into and out of the public sphere of concern. The 2008 Canadian federal election has brought it to the forefront in a big way for the first time in Canadian history. The Liberals and Greens are pushing harsh environmental reforms to stop "global warming". With all the fear mongering, guess who's leading the polls? Neither. In fact, the environment is what's sounding the death of the Liberal Party of Canada. At this point, they are at serious risk of collapsing into an insignificant fringe, just as Joe Clark's Tories did in the 1990s. For years we've been told to go green or else risk destroying the planet, and people believed it, so we thought. At first, 2008 seemed like it would be a banner year for the environmental movement, that is until a sting of unfortunate events happened.

First we saw an unusually cold and snowy winter, which brought record snowfalls to the Ontario, Quebec, and the US North-East. That was followed by a wettest summer in years with average temperatures after pro-global warming people predicted it would be the hottest and driest on record. In fact, this is the third year in a row where IPCC estimates where way off base. You can't just call that a casual, short term trend following their own logic. It proves definitively that the current models are wrong. Scientists who would try to dismiss that have their heads in the sand. These being the vary same people that call a typical week long summer heat wave definitive proof of anthropogenic global warming. However, to argue whether global warming exists or not is irrelevant at this point.

People like to join bandwagon causes, that is until something bigger comes along. Canadians and Americans are an easy enough people to read. They will join an cause only provided that they are not somehow inconvenienced by it. Until recently, the global warming movement sat just fine with people since they could feel good about themselves buying a Prius, organic local foods, and using "green" cleaners. This really didn't cost them anything or inconvenience them in anyway. Then things changed. In the United States, the sub-prime lending crisis reached critical mass as Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac went into receivership. They were followed by Washington Mutual and AIG. People are rather easy to frighten and the speech by George W Bush didn't help things much. People soon began imagining the return of bread lines and tent cities akin to the Great Depression of the 1930s. For years, we've been told that green policies will not hurt the economy. That may be true, if times are good. If times are bad, green is the economy's worst enemy. We already have Stephane Dion and Elizabeth May proposing carbon taxes that will hurt industry. We all know that when industry has to pay more tax, it does one of two things to cover it: it gets passed onto consumers, or employees get laid off. As costs rise, the standard of living drops. The carbon tax will have a negative effect on the economy. How much so is a moot point. The thing is that now people feel it to be a threat. They are now inconvenienced by the green movement to the point of having their jobs threatened. People don't give a rat's behind about helping the planet if they are poor and don't have a job. The threat of that has been enough to derail Dion's Green Shift. Human beings are naturally more interested in preserving themselves, to hell with everything else. The green movement is as I predicted, the flavour of the month. That month is now over as we entre a bitter economic winter. Green is dead and it's taking the Liberals down with it.

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Liberal Promises Tip the Scale at $80 billion

According to the National Post, Liberal campaign promises have topped the $80 billion mark. That's $80 billion in additional spending on top of what the government currently sends out. Comparatively, the Conservatives have promised $2 billion and the NDP $16 billion. Liberal spending promises work out to be roughly an additional $2484 per Canadian. The big question is where the Liberals are going to get that money. The carbon tax is starting to make more sense now. While Keynesian economics states its a good idea to spend during hard economic times, you can't spend money you don't have and you can't take more money from people who don't have it. Of course that's assuming the Liberals would follow through on their promises, which I seriously doubt they would. Canadians couldn't afford the tax hike to pay for it, meaning that the country would likely be put further into debt and deficit by these plans. Who says the environment wouldn't put heavy costs on our economy.

The desparity between the other two parties and the Liberals is also worth noting. The Liberals are promising 5 times the spending than the their next closest rival. Do the NDP and the Conservatives know something they don't? Yep, it's that the government can't afford it. I wonder how long it will be before Dion uses the McGuinty defence when he has to break promises and raise income and corporate taxes.

Source: National Post

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"Green Shift" Shows Liberals Still Ontario-Quebec Centric

I'm going to call Stephane Dion's green plan what we're all thinking; the green shaft. I'm sure that four letter word has crossed all our minds as the Liberal leader prepares to push his carbon tax agenda on a groaning Canada. One need not look to Kennedy or Roswell to find conspiracies since I would argue the green movement and politicians are both working together to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt in order to fuel their own agenda. For the Liberals, taxation seems to be the solution to everything. People smoke too much, tax it. People use health care too much, tax it more. People drive too much, tax them too. So now we're moving onto the dreaded carbon tax. The greenies have argued that the release of carbon in the atmosphere has gone on for too long and now it's time to pay the real cost of it. Academics love the idea, while sitting in their ivory towers watching the world go by through green coloured glasses. Such ideas, like the proposed carbon tax, are often created through knee jerk reactions to problems, or perceived problems, by politicians who have no idea what they're talking about.

This weekend, the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut joined Alberta and Saskatchewan in denouncing the Liberal leader's plan. According to the three territorial premiers, the plan would do great harm to northern communities since they rely on diesel fuel for heat and electricity. They argue that a carbon tax would futher add to already prohibative fuel costs and would do great harm to the territorial citizens. They noted that it was impractical to put in place alternative energy sources in the region. The cold tundra is hardly an ideal spot for wind or solar power. Alberta and Saskatchewan worry about economic collapse since the tax would put a heavy burden on the two provinces' oil industries. Oil provides a living for many living in the area. In BC, the first province to enact a carbon tax, truckers and remote communities are fuming since they can no longer afford fuel. Truckers are demanding to be exempt from the tax, something the government is unlikely to do. According to polls though, over half of Canadians have warmed up to the carbon tax. Unfrotunately, these polls tend to be "small-n" studies that interview perhaps 1000 people, willing to answer the phone to telemarketrs, in central Canada with no reguard to the rest of the country. Central Canada holds about half of the country's population. The problem is that most of Canada's resource rich regions, which our national economy depends upon, aren't located in central Canada but rather in the west. So far, I'm seeing more and more provinces and people lashing out against the idea of a carbon tax. Even we here in Ontario need to worry, as I indicated in a previous article. Prime Minister Stephen Harper rightly indicated that such a tax would "screw" Canadians. Even the NDP has dumped the idea since they know it will alienate their labour-centric voting base, many of whom work in the oil industry out west.

So why does Dion think this is a good idea when the costs of it are so high. First of all, we've all been lied to that the Earth will be destroyed by anthropogenic global warming, which is a dubious theory at best. Perhaps Dion genuinely thinks he will do some good all be it he is naive in thinking so. More accurately, it's simply another cash grab. Dion claims that the carbon tax will be revenue neutral, meaning that it will be offset by massive tax cuts in income taxes. Brian Mulroney tried the same thing when he instituted the controversial Goods and Services Tax back in the 1980s. The revenue neutral nature of the GST never saw the light of day and was largely responsible for the Progressive Conservatives not being reelected in 1993. (Scrapping the GST was a major part of Cretien's campaign, which also never say the light of day) Dion himself was environment minister under the Cretien government. He was appointed to the position rather than being an elected MP. He is where he is due to a healthy dose of patronage by his former boss, who himself was a cronie of Trudeau.

Dion has most recently been looking to the Australian model for his carbon tax. Their tax was instituted by new left wing government after former conservative PM Gordon Brown failed to win reelection. Australia may be a vast country but it is a warmer climate that doesn't rely on fossil fuels for heating. It also lacks the energy industry that Canada has. Trying to fit the Australian model to Canada is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. If he wants to compare it to another country, perhaps he should look to Europe, more specifically to our motherland, the UK. The United Kingdom has some of the highest taxes on carbon in the developed world. So far, it has gotten to the point where people cannot afford fuel and truck drivers are launching massive protests against high fuel prices. Many Britains are now living in fuel poverty. The UK like us has a colder climate and has a major oil and gas industry. I'd hardly think that Labour's carbon tax has worked there. Protests in the UK have been echoed by similar protests in other EU countries, and for what? Is there any proof that putting a tax on carbon emissions will reduce greenhouse gases and cancel global warming? I will give $1000 to the first person that can give me a mountain of proof from certified academic, peer-reviewed sources that it does. There in lies the rub. If you cannot prove that such a tax will have ANY effect on it's intended purpose, then it should not be implemented. Besides, you cannot discourage carbon use without having some sort of alternative being implemented. Without these alternatives, the carbon tax just screams cash grab.

What it amounts to is an abuse of power so that Dion can simply get rid of things he doesn't personally like. This all indicates to me that the Liberals simply want to plug their ears, close their eyes, and pretend there's nothing west of Sudbury and nothing east of Quebec City. This is exactly why the party is faltering. What you see in the polls are the die hard liberals who wouldn't change their vote no matter what. The party is at serious risk of becoming irrelevant and out of touch with Canadians, and stunts like the "Green Shift" don't help much. Right now, they're hoping to capitalize on the green hysteria. If it will work, I really can't say. The one thing I can say for sure is that Harper is right, it will screw Canadians.

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Sorting Through an Economic Mess

I think the history books will remember the 2000s as the being similar to the 1970s. That era was well known in North America for its malaise with the OPEC embargo, the unpopular war in Vietnam, economic recession, Watergate, etc. Right now we're in a bit of a mess that's eerily familiar. The United States is fresh off its sub-prime lending crisis which had been threatening recession for a while. Combined with the high Canadian dollar this caused, we knew out export industries would have some problems. However, federal and provincial governments all assumed Canada could weather the storm if a recession in the US came to be. April truly is the cruelest month given that what's happened in the past 30 days has shattered this assumption. Fuel costs soared throughout April. In Toronto alone, gas prices for regular unleaded shot up 15%. Diesel has seen even greater increases. Canadians on average are paying $1.26 on average for fuel compared to $1.15 a month ago. This means shipping costs are rising dramatically. The move towards ethanol, fuelled by environmentalism and agri-politics has led to massive shortages of staple grains. This has triggered a global food crisis which is even hitting North Americans hard. Unfortunately, it seems that recession now is inevitable and Canada will not be able to weather this storm.

There's really a lot I want to talk about here. We'll start with GM's job cuts due to the ailing auto industry. 900 jobs are being axed in Oshawa, mostly due to high gas prices reducing demands for trucks. Giving the auto industry government handouts is a bad idea in my opinion since it only encourages poor business decisions. GM and the CAW should have seen this coming a mile away but did nothing to combat it. Canada is the most expensive country in the world to produce vehicles. However, if the auto industry does go under, reports from TD indicate that Ontario, once the economic engine of Canada, might become a "have not" province in two years time, comparable to the likes of Newfoundland. This would mean that Ontario would begin receiving billions of dollars in equalization payments. This has been a touchy issue in the past since the big provinces always felt they were getting the short end of the stick on equalization. The National Post also pointed out that this system was never meant to have vast sums of money going to Canada's most populous provinces. This could spell disaster when it comes time to draft federal budgets. Even if the smaller provinces loose their have-not status, it is unlikely they will be able to afford such payments to the likes of Ontario and Quebec, causing political turmoil.

Jim Flaherty was correct in lambasting Ontario recently for not cutting business taxes to encourage investment in the provice. I have long said Dalton McGuinty was an ineffective premier. When he was first elected in 2003, Ontario's economy was going strong and the future seemed bright enough. Even in 2007 when he was reelected, there didn't seem like there would be a sudden economic downturn on the horizon. With three and a half years left in his term, McGuinty is going to have to make some tough decisions. So far, all he has announced is that there will be no cuts to government services, translating to mean no budget cuts. Keynsian economics, on which modern liberalism is based, does say government spending should increase to stimulate the economy. However, there doesn't seem to be any plans to do that. Bail out packages as I have said do not work as they encourage poor decisions. McGuinty has given no clear indication of plans to help the economy other than that. The fact is that Ontario is no longer competitive and it's not the fault of NAFTA or Asian trade but rather stupid mistakes made by our own leaders. You can't simply shut your boarders anymore and hope for the best since no country is self sufficient. You also can't close your eyes and plug your ears in times of crisis and hope the problem simply goes away. Inaction usually breeds the opposite of the desired result.

That's not to say that the federal government has no responsibility in the matter. Like McGuinty, the federal Conservatives seem to have no plans to do anything to curb rampant inflation due to high fuel costs. Kim Campbell rightly noted in an interview with the National Post that Harper has become far too controlling. He's trying to do everything himself rather than relying on the tallents of his MPs. This has led to an unclear agenda as the Conservatives are begining to loose steam. As for the Liberals, Stephane Dion seems to think a carbon tax on gasoline would lower fuel prices, as he noted on an interview with CTV. That logic has holes big enough to drive the Queen Mary 2 through. I can't see how charging more for something would make it cheaper given fuel is an economically inelastic product. That means that as price goes up, demand doesn't change much. This is because fuel is an essential commodity. The NDP I have not heard much from. Jack Layton has been unusually quiet lately at a time where they should be making a fuss. I think the NDP on the federal level has become too much of a bleeding heart party and has forgotten its labour roots. The primary issue is that the Green party has been stealing votes from them, so they now focus on green issues. Unfortunately, green doesn't put food on the table or money in the bank for the average Joe. This mess must be a wet dream for these radical environmentalists though, who have long envisioned a "cooler but poorer" world as being the solution to anthropogenic global warming.
The Liberals are smart though by not pulling the plug on the Conservatives. If an election were to be called in the near future, it would truly end up as a battle royal between the three national parties. None of them have enough support for a majority and at this point, it could go either way. I'm leaning towards another Conservative victory at this point, but it would be by an even tighter margin than in 2006. The time for bickering in the House of Commons is over now. Both the Liberals and Conservatives need to start working together constructively if Canada wants to try and escape the worst of the inevitable recession on the horizon. I'm not an economist so I really can't provide specific suggestions. Right now, the best things to do would be to ban the use of ethanol for fuel as well as cut gas taxes in half at the vary least. This would help ease the pain at the pumps for consumers and businesses.

Clearly something needs to be done. If fuel goes up, that eats into profits of businesses that rely on it. That means wages go down and prices go up. I know for a fact that many people are going to be in serious trouble. Just look at all the people who live off their credit cards and only pay the minimum balance per month. Though I'm usually in favour of government staying out of business, it just can't this time around. Inaction will only breed the worst recession in decades.

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Carbon Tax Would Hurt Low Income Earners

Perhaps I should go into more detail about why the proposed carbon tax has struck a nerve with me outside of my conservative mindset. Being a university student, I'm a low income earner. I drive a fuel efficient car. Yesterday, I noticed I had less than a 1/4 tank of fuel left. The gas station was selling it for $1.12. Too expensive I said. Unfortunately, the price shows no sign of dropping. Gasoline in itself is currently overpriced by a fair amount. The price spikes are fuelled mostly by speculation of investors, so they're artificially inflated. I remember hearing Liberal MP and gas crusader Dan McTage say it should be around $0.80 - $0.90 per litre given the current market. I realize that $1.12 is not really that expensive given the Canada average today is $1.18. So yes, there are people worse off then us in the GTA. I can still remember freaking out when the gas hit $1.30 after Hurricane Katrina, though fortunately, the company I worked for at the time was paying my gas bill since I was using my own car for business.

So what does this have to do with the proposed carbon tax that many economists are advocating? The answer is simple, everything! As you know, I do not support the anthropogenic global warming argument and in effect, I think taxing carbon emissions would end up doing nothing what so ever in that respect. The problem is that it's not big polluters they want to tax but rather add it to the fuel excise tax on gasoline, which would amount to a minimum of an additional $0.10 per litre. If added to today's price, that would bump up costs to $1.22! For American readers, this would roughly equate to $4.40 per gallon. British Colombia was the first province to enact a carbon tax and it already has some people in the north fuming over rising fuel costs.

What the environmentalists forget is that unless you live in an urban area, public transit is not an option. Even then, it's iffy. Rising fuel costs there have bumped ticket prices up 22% in the last five years for a one-way cash fare. I expect the TTC to raise their fare to $3 by 2009 given their current history. Also, our public transit systems in Canada are probably some of the worst in the first world. Slow, rarely on time, using outdated equipment, and run by unions who threaten to strike every five minutes. For most of us, the car is the better way, and in fact the only way. Yet there has been a march against drivers recently with higher license fees, registration fees, proposed road tolls to lower congestion, higher insurance costs, higher fuel costs. The list goes on. It's quickly getting to the point where many low income earners can't afford to drive. That means they can't get to their jobs, and are therefore out of work. There are also people who drive for a living, such as truckers, who have seen big chunks of their income taken by fuel costs. The cost therefore is added onto the final product, which is why we're seeing food prices spike.

Of course, we all know how the Canadian tax system works. Sure it's a proposed $0.10 now but how long before it's $0.15 or $0.20, which is what some climate hysterics are already demanding. Economists claim that the money will be used to lower personal income taxes so in effect, you're not really paying more. Do these people have no idea how the Canadian government works?! The original gas tax was supposed to go directly to roads and transit but it does not. Everything goes into one giant pot. It's unlikely that Liberal or even Conservative governments will give all the money back to the tax payer. We'd be lucky to get half of it back, if any at all. Besides, if that's the system you want to use, why even institute the tax in the first place. It just makes no logical sense. Then again, little concerning environmentalism and Canadian taxation does.

Carbon taxes do not punish the people driving the Escalades and Hummers because since they can afford those expensive gas guzzlers, they can afford to absorb the extra fuel costs. It's low income earners who will suffer from a carbon tax as fuel prices for their vehicles. I haven't even discussed how this would affect people who use oil and natural gas to heat their homes, because surely they'll be the next target. When does it stop? The proposed carbon taxes would do far too much harm and no good at all. They would effect the lowest income families the most, those that the liberals claim to advocate. The carbon tax is something we should not even be considering.

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Less for More: Garbage Collection

I've decided to start a new series of articles entitled "Less for More". One of the things I've noticed lately is how our tax bills are on the rise, yet government services that effect the average Joe seem to be on the decline. Coming on the heels of learning that the Ontario civil service "Sunshine" list (those earning more than $100,000) has grown by a huge number, I think that makes this fact more relevant.

This week is garbage collection. Recently, Halton has introduced the green bins, something many other cities have been using. I have to question if these bins really improve the garbage collection service. Here in particular, 2007 was not a good year for picking up trash. In Milton, trash collection has frequently been late. There are many days I've come home to still find my garbage sitting at the curb, only to hear the truck cruise by at dinner time, despite the demand to have your trash out by 7am. Recycle pickup was also infrequent, limited to every two weeks instead of every one, and big item pickups were every two months. Halton made some changes for 2008. Recycle and green bin are once a week now, but garbage is only every two weeks. That leaves smelly bags to fester in the garage. There are also now strict weight limits for the bags of garbage, since we can't have the big garbage men straining themselves to pick up bags my 83 year old Grandma has no problems with. Big pickup has also been limited to just three items. The supposed goal is to reduce the amount of waste heading to the landfills but I don't buy that. As for the green bins, they must have cost the region a bundle to buy them and print out the advertising campaign where it would have likely been cheaper to not introduce them. They were not widely popular in Milton. Further more, the bins require you to use special "biodegradable" bags, which further adds to the home owners expense. Halton has a very high tax rate given its lack of service.

Things get worse if you travel some 30km east of Milton to the centre of the universe, aka Toronto. Toronto has drastically cut back on garbage collection and has introduced a pay-per-bin policy which could add several hundred dollars to your annual bill no matter what you throw out. This obviously punishes larger families and businesses. In the mean time, Toronto has just levied some of the biggest tax increases in its history while the city continues to spend money like it were water on unnecessary expenditures. Of course, what could you expect from the central group of technocrats that huddle around Miller, the NDP showing its hidden totalitarian stripes. Toronto has long avoided dealing with its trash problem, trying to send their garbage (both human and otherwise) to nearby communities or to the US. The mayor and his cronies are afraid to open up a new landfill due to the "harmful environmental effects" it will have. Meanwhile, it's ok to send it to Michigan or other Ontario municipalities at huge expense to the Toronto tax payer where they can suffer the harmful effects. Ironically, I believe that having to pay-per-bin will most likely encourage people to illegally dump their junk, which Toronto already has a big problem with. So in the end, they're not saving their environment.

Taxes go up, service goes down. That's the Canadian way. I think it's time we put municipal leaders at the curb for not addressing one of our societies most basic services.

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Green Hysteria = Tax Revenue Gold

I opened up the paper this morning and was met by yet another story on global warming. This one disgusted me more than most since the fears of many GW debunkers are coming true. BC has become the first government in North America to institute the much dreaded carbon tax. Who will pay this tax? Not businesses but you, the ordinary citizen. Namely motorists and those who heat their houses with hydrocarbon fuels such as oil and natural gas. In other words, most BC residents will be footing this bill. The tax will be set at $10 a tonne of carbon dioxide, increasing the price of gas another 2.4 cents per liter. As you probably know, BC already has some of the highest gas prices in the country. They play to increase the tax to $30 over the next five years. They gave an example of a person driving a pickup truck $40,000 a year. This is a typical vehicle a construction worker or trades-person would drive. The tax alone would add another $500 to their fuel bill. I find that utterly outrageous. What makes this more upsetting is other provinces, particularly with less cool headed liberal governments will likely follow suit. Quebec is already talking about instituting a tax.

BC Finance Minister Carole Taylor said "We promised you green and today we deliver green." Noting that "This is an important turning point for B.C., and we think for Canada because we are out in front on this," she said, suggesting the new tax could raise up a new "social movement." So basically, this social movement means that already overtaxed Canadians will have to stretch their budgets even further in order to pay for a problem that does not exist? This is just another blatant cash grab by left wing governments looking for any excuse in the book to tax their citizens further. What makes this particularly outrageous is legions of people, brainwashed by the lies of the global warming people, will buy into it and gladly pay. This needs to stop NOW. I personally refuse to pay any carbon tax, regardless of the consequences, because I feel that the government should not be using fraud to extort even more money for citizens. This is wrong and yet nobody can see it. Global warming is the biggest money making scam since the Papal indulgences of the 16th century. Scamming lower class people to pay for lavish expenditures. At least one man was smart enough to stand up and say that was wrong. Where is the Martin Luther of global warming?

Source: National Post

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