Taxes. I have a love/hate relationship with taxes. I hate paying them, but I love the services they provide. Fundamental to every political campaign is taxes; whether to raise them or not. The more rightist parties want to keep taxes low, while the leftist parties want to increase taxes and pay for more social services. It is a time-old debate.
In an interesting turn of events, Tim Hudak announced yesterday that his party will not raise taxes. He sent an explicit letter to the Chief Electoral Officer that declared his position. There are loop holes around this, such as downloading taxing responsibilities to the province *cough*Mike Harris*cough*. But Mr. Hudak also stated he would not increase the tax responsibilities of the province. woo hoooo!
You may be asking yourself, "Why would a party leader explicitly state their intentions during a campaign? Isn't it better to use vague political mumbo-jumbo and leave the outcome open-ended; so no matter what you do, you can say you met your "goals"? That may be so, but under the Tax Payer Protection Act parties are forced to announce their tax intentions before an election.
I admire Mr. Hudak's goals. Taxes suck. But let's be realistic. Taxes go up because government plays an increasingly bigger role in everyone's lives, whether we like it or not. More of us are crowding into increasingly smaller spaces, and the government sorts out the repercussions. Maybe if everyone just stopped making babies we could expect government to play a smaller role and taxes to go down.
I don't mean to say the Conservatives are off the mark, in terms of their ideology, but let's be serious. No tax increases for the next 4 years? seriously? You better not close my hospital... or let bums control my water supply.
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