Apr 12
23
McGuinty Initiates Class Warfare in Ontario: David Krayden
“They wanted a tax on the rich; I want a way to pay down our deficit faster.”
It’s classic Dalton McGuinty and that’s how the premier of Ontario described his decision to cave in to the NDP’s Andrea Horwath and her demand to put a two per cent surtax on the “rich.” In return, McGuinty will have New Democrat support for the Liberal budget and thus the continued survival of this morally destitute minority government. Just who are these fat cats that the premier wants to squeeze? According to the dynamic duo it’s those insufferable overachievers who are making $500 thousand or more per annum.
In a province with a history replete with oleaginous premiers who couldn’t tell it like it is to save their lives, McGuinty may be the petroleum king. While he moves farther to the Left to cling to power and embraces the class warfare rhetoric of the socialists, he has decided to take outright ownership of the concept and turn words into policies. The verbal and mental gymnastics inherent in his justification above is akin to saying “They wanted to kill six people in the room; I just wanted some more space.” This is the kind of logic by which Ontario, the Great Have Not Province, is governed.
And never mind that McGuinty has already stated that he will not tackle the deficit through further tax increases; why should we have believed him now when he has found so many other taxes with which to fill our lives? How about the levies and surcharges and premiums that dominate life in this province? Obviously the words are just meaningless sound waves that are presumably superior to white noise.
But has the Great McGuinty finally exceeded his quota of having his cake and eating it too? Has he – dare we say it – gone too far? Why even ask the question? In any objective analysis of what this government has achieved in its tenure – from e-Health scandals to a Green Energy Policy that will bankrupt the treasury – this is a premier who has been in power for far too long and has gotten away with this kind of nonsense too many times. Yet it is one thing to add an environmental tax here and an OHIP premium there, it is quite another to declare that the so-called wealthy should be punished for their success, that in Ontario you will have to pay dearly for being so productive. The Ontario Liberal Party is now part of the socialist alternative.
That alternative not going to pay down anyone’s deficit because it is predicated on the dubious assumption that people who earn these supposedly outrageous salaries are going to stay in Ontario and give more of their hard-earned bucks to this profligate Liberal government that is only going to stop spending other people’s money when the well is dry. When the rich are coerced into giving more of their money away to the public coffers, they move – away from this socialist mayhem.
What will be the response of PC Leader Tim Hudak? Will he react like a true conservative or find ways to temper his message as he has demonstrated such an aptitude for? The sweet irony of this story is that while Royal Dalton announces another tax grab, Albertans are voting to oust a Progressive Conservative government that they found too liberal and replace it with a truly conservative one in the Wildrose Party. Don’t you pine for such a political reality in this province, where instead of putting up with political parties that move steadily leftward and insist that we just shut up and accept this inevitability, the people have enough spine to throw the tax and spenders out of office?
We shall watch the results in Alberta with mixed feelings: joy that some provinces can say no to statism but sadness that it will not very likely happen in Ontario.
David Krayden is the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies.