A toast to tax-fighter Terry
The following is an edited excerpt of remarks from a speech given in honour of FP Comment’s Terence Corcoran, as he was presented with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s 2017 TaxFighter Award on April 5 in Toronto. The remarks were those of Adam Daifallah, chairman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and former member of the National Post’s editorial board.
Terry Corcoran has devoted his entire career to advancing a core set of convictions: lower taxes, smaller government, less government waste, and commonsense public policy. He not only promotes those ideas, but — equally importantly — he compellingly debunks the other side, along with the people who advocate opposing positions, and the organizations that support them. He has done so not with endless platitudes or flowery rhetoric, but with actual facts, numbers and logic.
Terry Corcoran has advocated these ideas in print for more than four decades — long before they were considered in vogue. In so doing he not only helped push these ideas into the mainstream, he created a “safe space” for a whole generation of previously ignored opinion writers and thinkers — ideological soulmates who had a home on his cherished FP Comment pages.
Terry’s writing is compelling and impactful for several reasons. First, he’s always been willing to tackle difficult topics, and stick with them over a long period. With his relentless jabs at bad policy of all kinds — from the folly of high taxes, to the corrosive effects of overregulation and government subsidies — Terry was always willing to point the finger and name names, but in a cool- headed and interesting way.
Second, he has an unrivalled ability to turn conventional wisdom upside down. When the pack is running one way, he often runs in the other. He will often surprise you. Just the other day he had a column defending the Bombardier executive bonuses — which was at odds with just about everyone else.
Third, he’s ideologically consistent. He is not a man who changes his view after wetting his finger and checking the direction of the wind. The same values and ideas have anchored his writing forever. A common theme of Terry’s over the years is that no matter the policy issue, whenever politicians get involved, it makes things worse. He will often point out the unintended consequences of do- good public policy.
Fourth, the rigour and logic of his writing make his points difficult to attack. Here is a guy who is not just willing to use fancy prose and write compellingly, he’s prepared to lace his columns with graphs and charts — actual data — to back him up. You might see as many pie charts and graphs on the FP Comment page as you would see words.
Another key point: he has the right enemies. If you can judge a man by his opponents, Terry Corcoran has demi-god status. The far-left activist website, National Observer, called Terry “a polemicist who embraces an appalling Ayn Randian worldview — where government regulators, unions, NGOs and political and social movements have no business interfering in free markets.” If they meant that as an insult, I can’t figure out how.
Terry was also an early advocate of taxpayer advocacy in Canada — long before others in the mainstream media. As far back as 1993, he was writing in his column about our organization’s then- Alberta director, a 25- year old named Jason Kenney, and our plans for expansion to Ontario.
Lastly, Terry is loyal. He’s never been one to cut and run on someone at the first sign of trouble. He’s a great example of what the late, great George Jonas once called a “foul-weather friend.”
I feel comfortable saying that no one else in Canada over the past several decades, and certainly no one outside of electoral politics, has done more than Terence Corcoran to advance the ideals this organization stands for.