299 bloor call control.
Senior Member
I just spent awhile typing this up on a facebook entry, so I don't want to type it again, so here's a copy and paste...
Utter and Complete Disgust at the Conservatives
This man angers me beyond belief, although, judging by his face, he actually looks like Gabbo, a talking puppet, so to speak, for Stephen Harper. Either way, I'm just flabbergasted by the "New Government"'s so-called tax relief measures announced yesterday.
The resemblance is striking, no?
Firstly, they are trying to look like the good guys by cutting the income tax rate for the lowest income makers -- trying. Luckily, the press has mentioned it (as a side note), but this won't stop the Conservatives for taking full credit. Though, if you remember back to their first budget, this is actually rolling back the tax INCREASE to that same bracket to the level that the LIBERALS had cut it to. Was this the plan all along? Use the poorest people in our society as political pawns?
I'll give them a little bit of credit though, increasing the personal exemption level is indeed a good thing, as is decreasing corporate taxes. But Liberal or Conservative, this is what was needed and what would have happened anyway.
Where my flabbergastness comes in is with the GST cut. Again, we're pandering to the stupidity of the electorate who will see this as a "good thing" and that the government is keeping its promises. Anybody who has taken a first year economics course will easily tell you that this is the stupidest tax cut the government should make right now, especially when the economy is generally doing very well (manufacturing aside, of course), and stimulating the retail sector any further is pointless (see all the stories about record retail profits and sales across the country). Even the country's top economists have universally agreed that a GST cut is the least productive tax move the government can make. The GST, as much as we hate it, is a great tool that we have in the country, more comes in when the economy is good and people are willing to spend. It also is a consumption tax, to keep us from being too lavish about things, and a 1% cut only will impact those who buy the biggest of all things... not a low-income household trying to buy toys or books for their children, where the savings is only pennies, pennies which we often disregard in our pocket change.
The anger, however, enters when I listened to 680News this morning. Flaherty quickly brushed off any possible assistance to Toronto in terms of the One Cent campaign of allocating 1% of the GST to us, and all other cities across Canada. He went one step further, he said not to expect any assistance of this type in this update, nor in the next federal budget. He brought up the current "$37-billion" infrastructure program that his government put in last budget and if Toronto wants money, that's where it should get it. I'm sorry, this will solve NOTHING in terms of municipal budget issues. It's all fine and dandy that we're getting money to build stuff, but where's the money to actually RUN it? The big financial crunch in our cities, as evidenced by the recent Toronto tax initiatives, is in our operating budgets, and the One Cent campaign was largely to solve this crunch. Your puny $37-billion over a thousand years for the whole frickin' country won't do ANYTHING, Mr. Flaherty.
This complete ignorance of the issue and complete political posturing can be summarized by one quote from Mr. Flatulence:
"Our job in government is to cut taxes, it's clear in Toronto, their job is to increase taxes"
How petty, how ignorant, and good luck getting more votes in the GTA next election. This is no longer just a 416 issue. The Conservative love-nest of the 905 is beginning to share Toronto's views of the need for more sustained, economy-scaled revenues for municipal coffers. Virtually every city in Canada is behind David Miller on his One Cent campaign. I really wonder when they'll actually pay attention.