Voters Have Short Memories.....

Raphael Alexander: We don't need to explain ... we're the government

Posted: November 20, 2009, 3:03 PM by NP Editor

Dalton McGuinty, the premier for Ontario, says there is no need to hold public hearings on his plan to harmonize the provincial sales tax with the federal GST in July of 2010, because voters will be able vote on the subject in the 2011 provincial election. Does anyone else have any trouble with that math? The Liberals don’t care that Ontarians will have no say on the matter, because by the time the get a chance to vote, the HST will have been implemented for a year already.

Mr. McGuinty did the same thing with the provincial health premiums in 2004, when he broke an election promise not to raise taxes. And sure enough, by the time the elections came around in 2007, enough Ontario voters had forgotten about the tax hike and the Liberals were rewarded with another majority mandate.

The federal Conservative government has already come to an agreement with the provincial Liberals on the HST, including a $4.3 billion payout to lubricate the deal. The Liberals have admitted this is as much a cash issue as anything else:

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