Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan

Many Ontarians are wondering: where is the official opposition in Queens Park? The Ontario Liberal government is drowning in deficit, mishandling taxpayer money, struggling to deal with the eHealth scandal, and now they seek to introduce a harmonized sales tax. These issues are political dynamite, so why haven’t the Tories jumped all over the wounded doe that is the Liberal government?

Dalton McGuinty and Dwight Duncan have made quite a pair of populist media darlings lately. They’ve been trumpeting the virtues of their new HST exemptions for coffee, newspapers, and homes under $400 000. While the Liberals are magnanimously laying these pearls before the swine, the weak response that has come from the Ontario opposition continues to descend into ineptitude.

Tax harmonization has been a pet project of Federal Finance Minister Jim Flarety for a long time. He has made no bones about his disgust for the high taxes on business in Ontario, going so far as to accuse Dalton McGuinty of administering the most severe tax regime in the entire G8 bloc. McGuinty has made it clear that without the funds and cooperation of the federal Conservatives, the HST couldn’t have happened. In effect, the Ontario Liberals have allied themselves with Stephen Harper’s federal government on this issue.
(more…)