- HST - Harper and his advisers are having a good laugh over this one.

Comment on:
Can HST flip-flop boost the Liberals?, Opposing tax may not be right, but it's smart, John Ivison, National Post, 24 Nov.'09
http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=42469079-0db0-4da3-b283-396aea1a7c2e

It's not the HST, it's the increase in taxes and in the middle of a recession!

It may be that the HST, theoretically, is beneficial to the economy overall. However, the way in which it is being implemented - i.e. taxing things that weren't taxed before or increasing the tax on things that were, that is causing all the problems. In other words, it represents a tax increase and of almost 2 points (a recent Toronto-Dominion Bank Report indicates that the HST will represent an effective tax hike of 1.5%). This is when Harper, Flaherty and the Con's keep saying they won't increase taxes and right in the middle of a recession. And that's the real issue.

The reduction of the GST and the promises of no taxes is such a huge problem for Harper and the Con's that Harper order Flaherty not to discuss the HST. Further evidence of this being a problem for Harper and the Con's is the fact that Harper is, in reality, paying off the Ontario and BC governments in order to implement this HST, the Ontario government is getting a rebate of approx $4.3 billion from Harper and BC is getting $1.6 billion just to implement it. Harper is thus trying to undo the economic damage done by reducing the GST 2 points and passing the buck, so to speak, off to the Ontario and BC provincial governments - well worth spending 6 billion of Canadian's hard earned tax dollars.

I'm sure that behind closed doors, Harper and his advisers are having a good laugh over this one.

Harper and the Con's reduced the GST by two points, when they knew that it was bad economic policy. They did it solely for the political benefits and Canada be damned. It is no co-incidence that the HST will represent an increase in value added taxes of nearly 2 points, overall. Ian Brodie, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, said in Montreal at the annual conference of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. “Despite economic evidence to the contrary, in my view the GST cut worked … It worked in the sense that it helped us to win.”

It may be that Paul Martin and the Liberals in the past were in favour of an HST. But, that was not in the middle of a recession and there is nothing to indicate that the way it would be done would have represented an increase in value added tax over all.

I think that Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberals would be quite right in opposing Harper's implementation of this tax.

Lloyd MacIlquham cicblog.com/comments.html