Archive for HST

Stop Hydro price hikes!

August 1, 2010 HST, Liberal Party of Ontario, Ontario Hydro, Ontario New Democratic Party No comments

The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) is calling on the labour and democratic movements to raise the roof over an estimated 43% hydro price hike to effect over the next year.

 

The cause of the hike is the break‑up of the publicly owned Ontario Hydro under the Tory government of Mike Harris. Privatization and deregulation have shorn hydro users while “generating” huge profits for the private electricity generators, distributors, retailers, investors, brokers, and others on the for-profit gravy train.

 

“We need that rising tide of public anger to swamp the government and the Legislature with a demand to restore public power in Ontario, and put it under public democratic control,” says a statement from the CPC (Ontario). “Otherwise, a 46% increase will be just one of many more coming down the wires to overloaded homeowners and tenants and small business owners.

 

“We need to end this gouging and profiteering by the corporate friends of the Tories and Liberals in Queen’s Park once and for all. Putting energy under public ownership and democratic control means delivering power at cost, power that rightfully belongs to the people of Ontario, not the energy pirates and profiteers.”

 

The Ontario NDP has responded to news of the price shocks with a proposal to remove the HST from hydro bills. But the Communists say this is addressing the impact of profiteering, not the cause. Privatization and deregulation of power must be addressed.

 

“Furthermore, why remove the hated HST only from hydro bills?” asked CPC (Ontario) leader Liz Rowley. “Why not abolish the HST altogether? This is another Tory/Liberal tax gift to the corporations, one that’s costing the public $4.5 billion annually. “People feel like they’ve been had over the last 20 years ‑ and so they have,” Rowley added. “Ontario needs a new government with a progressive agenda that will put people before profits, and people’s needs before corporate greed. That’s what this is really about.”

Rescind the HST in Ontario!

August 1, 2010 2011 Election, Front, HST, Labour movement, Liberal Party of Ontario, Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario No comments
HST-STOP

Commentary from the Communist Party (Ontario)

The Ontario Liberal government, in cahoots with the Tories in Ottawa, are bailing out corporate Ontario with another $9 billion gift of public tax dollars.

 

They’re doing it by relieving Big Business of $4.5 billion in sales taxes, and by cutting the corporate income tax (CIT) and capital taxes by another $4.5 billion.

 

And the public’s going to shell out for it by: (1) paying a new 13% Harmonized Sales Tax that will likely increase after 2015; and (2) paying for program and service cuts and user fees after the Liberals finish their “rigorous strategic spending review.”

 

This is public money that ought to go into job creation, health, education, housing, child care, social programs, a higher minimum wage and increased pensions.

 

They hope you won’t notice their tax “reform” is a massive tax grab – from your pocket into the pockets of the corporations and the wealthy. They hope you won’t object when hospitals, schools and public services are cut back, sold off, or privatized because corporate tax cuts have stripped the cupboards bare.

 

The HST is a cash cow and a pork barrel for Liberal and Tory governments that can increase the tax rate whenever they want after 2015. That’s what countries with “value-added” (VAT) taxes do – in Europe and elsewhere. In England, VAT taxes rose to 17.5% January 1, 2010. In France, the VAT tax on food is now 19.6%.

 

The Harper government is cutting a $5 billion cheque to help McGuinty sell the HST to the public. Like Flaherty did to sell corporate tax cuts when he was Treasurer in Ontario, every family will get three cheques totalling up to $900, and every individual will get up to $300, all before the fall 2011 provincial election. That’s the price these governments and their big corporate friends are willing to pay, to get the HST through. That’s how important it is to corporate Canada.

 

And that’s why Conservative leader Tim Hudak won’t promise to rescind it if the Tories win the 2011 provincial elections.

 

We need progressive tax reform based on ability to pay – that is, tax reform that will shift the load off working people and put it on those most able to pay – the corporations and the wealthy. Until the 1960s, corporations used to pay up to 50 cents of every tax dollar. Now they pay pennies. And working people pay more and more, and get less and less. The Tories in Ottawa are dropping corporate taxes to 15% by 2012 while the Liberals in Queen’s Park are dropping corporate taxes to 10% by 2014 for a combined Marginal Effective Tax Rate (METR) of 25% – the lowest rate in the industrialized world, and 15% lower than in the US Great Lake states.

 

In August, the BC courts found the Campbell government could not block a public campaign to force a referendum on the hated HST. If working people can overturn the HST in BC, it can be done in Ontario too. Mass protests and pressure on MPPs and the Legislature now can make rescinding the HST a central issue in the 2011 provincial election campaign.

 

Petitions and protests can force the issue here too!

 

Progressive tax reform would:

Axe the HST, and eliminate the PST and GST

Double the corporate tax rate for a combined METR rate of 50%

Restore and expand the capital tax and the corporate minimum tax

Introduce wealth and inheritance taxes on estates over $500,000

Eliminate taxes on incomes under $35,000

Remove education from the property tax, cutting it by 50%

Progressive tax reform would generate funds that could be used to:

 

Put Ontario back to work

Build affordable housing

Raise the minimum wage to $16

Raise pensions and lower the voluntary age to 60

Eliminate tuition and fund public and post-secondary education

Expand Medicare to include pharmacare, denticare, long-term care

Phase out nuclear and coal fired power and replace them with publicly-owned and environmentally sustainable solar and wind energy.

 

Ontario budget: open for business

May 1, 2010 2011 Election, Front, HST, Liberal Party of Ontario, Ontario Budget, Taxation No comments

By Liz Rowley, CPC (Ontario) leader
People’s Voice Newspaper, May 2010

 

The Ontario budget delivers on the government’s promise to open the province up to (foreign) business. It includes a $4.6 billion corporate tax cut, another $4.5 billion cut effective July 1 with the implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax, elimination of the capital tax, and a small business tax reduction. Other items: a two-year public sector wage freeze, cuts to health and education, and a review of provincial assets for sale. For the poor, the budget eliminates the Special Diet Allowance, which allowed those with serious health problems a little extra for food on top of the pittance paid by welfare.

 

The government tried to play down the horrible news by declaring that somewhere in the future its policies would generate new jobs and surpluses to fund social programs.

 

In other words, pie in the sky when you die. Of course it’s a lie, but most people don’t know what to do about it. It’s also a lie that “we’re all in this together” as the Budget speech asserts.

 

The news that corporate profits have recovered, and that CEOs and executives have had performance bonuses reinstated, has generated deep public anger.

 

Some take comfort in the Liberals’ decision to fund the 8,500 child spots that the federal government just abandoned, and in the funding of full day junior and senior kindergarten for 4 and 5 year olds. But the province won’t cover the other $1 billion in federal spending on transit, housing, and health care that Harper has also abandoned.

 

In fact, our self-styled education premier, Dalton McGuinty, continues to underfund school boards, universities and colleges, and allows tuition to keep rising. Accessibility? If students have money, they have access, says McGuinty. The budget anticipates plenty of money from international students, whom it plans to exploit generously. Apparently, that’s the new funding formula for public education.

 

Health care? The budget uses scare tactics, citing the rise in expenditures over the past 20 years, projected into the future. The idea is that Ontario can’t sustain current levels of service. Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure, as these numbers show.

 

Data prepared by the Ontario Health Coalition shows that hospital spending as a percentage of health care has declined from a high of 52% in 1981 to a low of 37% in 2008. In other words, hospitals can’t provide services because they’re underfunded. Ontario spends less per capita than any other province on hospital service.

 

Another round of hospital closures is upon us. The last one was directed by the Harris Tories, this one by the Liberals, both under the premise of “efficiencies”. Both have eroded health care and caused deaths in overloaded emergency rooms, hospitals and clinics.

 

These are “made-in-Queen’s Park” crises. Both the Liberals and Tories are geared up to sell the idea of a spending crisis, and the conclusion that spending must be reigned in. But this is a crisis of inadequate revenue, not over-spending. Instead of more than $9 billion in corporate tax breaks, and the HST – a regressive flat tax that will hit working people the hardest – the government should increase corporate taxes. It should keep the capital tax, and expand it to cover all industries and business including underground mining. It should eliminate the HST, and introduce a progressive tax system that would put the load on the corporations, not working people and the unemployed.

 

Progressive tax reform would generate the funds needed for universal health care, for quality, public child care, and for public and post-secondary education. Progressive tax reform would enable the delivery of public transit and affordable housing, while cutting property taxes in half.

 

Instead, McGuinty’s tax reform “of a generation” is a Big Business tax grab, and it’s going to hurt a lot of people, as OPSEU President Smokey Thomas pointed out.

 

The Liberals intend to pay for the corporate tax cuts with a public sector wage cut of at least 4% – about the rate of inflation over the next two years. That’s equivalent to a week’s pay, says Thomas, and that’s a wage cut, not a freeze.

 

OPSEU will be organizing demonstrations at Liberal fund-raisers, and will vigorously oppose Bill 16. They should be joined by the whole labour movement. There are stirrings in Toronto to mount a fightback that will focus on defence of social programs and services. This is welcome news.

 

But it’s disturbing that some unions are `holding back’, thinking they can clear the two-year wage freeze before the next set of negotiations, or because they think they can hold their noses and live with the Liberals, but not with the Hudak Tories as the 2011 provincial elections approach.

 

After NDP leader Andrea Horwath told the media she refused to be boxed in on the wage freeze issue, a lot of workers wonder if they can live with any of the parties currently in the Legislature.

 

The attack on wages, pensions, and benefits started last year in the private sector with the autoworkers, municipal workers, and miners. Now it encompasses all workers, public and private sector, across Canada and globally. The austerity programs in Ontario are paralleled in BC, Quebec, Europe and around the world. So are the corporate tax cuts, the sale of public assets, the elimination of social programs, and the attack on free collective bargaining and the right to strike, organize and picket.

 

“Open for Business” is the second shoe after the 2008 economic crisis, and it’s just beginning. The right-wing is very active in Ontario in a way we haven’t seen before, attempting to turn worker against worker, private against public, employed against unemployed, Canadian born against migrants and new Canadians, young against old.

 

That’s why the fightback of 75,000 protesters in Montreal was never publicized in English-speaking Canada, and why the heroic ten-month strike of 3,300 miners and smelterworkers in Sudbury, Port Colborne and Voisey’s Bay is virtually unknown outside those communities. Heroic struggles like these could be lost without the whole labour movement actively intervening. Organized labour cannot leave this matter to a Legislature that is indifferent or hostile to working people. Nor can labour wait it out.

 

The CPC (Ontario) is calling for a mass extra-parliamentary struggle for policies that put people’s needs ahead of corporate greed.

 

The OFL must pick up the challenge, flex its muscles, and show its power. Organized labour must lead a province wide struggle to block the right, defeat this corporate budget, and campaign for policies and government to bring in a recovery for people in Ontario.