GIVE QUEBEC THE TAX JEWELS? NON, MERCI.

To celebrate Saint Jean Baptiste Day, now officially known as the Fête nationale, the Conservative Party of Canada on Sunday promised Quebecers a single income tax form, thus serving up the federal income tax on a platter to the Salome of provinces.

Quebec has had an income tax since 1939 but for its first 15 years, because of the emergency of the Second World War, Ottawa collected it. Every year since 1954, however, we Quebecers have had to file separate returns, one to Ottawa and one to Quebec City. This wastes taxpayers’ time, effort and money, but since the days of Premier Maurice Duplessis, Quebec has insisted that administering its own system allows the province to express its distinct fiscal identity.

The other provinces have had distinct fiscal identities, too, but they’ve expressed them mainly through the rate of a provincial top-up onto federal taxes owing. By and large the feds were in charge of deciding the tax base, and provinces simply told their taxpayers: “To your federal taxes add x or y or z per cent for us,” the x, y, or z then constituting the province’s income-tax distinctiveness. In the last couple of decades, Ottawa offered the provinces more flexibility both in defining the base and setting the rate, but no province has had Quebec’s freedom to design its income tax exactly the way it wants.

Even so, the province has shown a certain pragmatism in following its own path. It generally adopts the same tax base as Ottawa, so taxpayers or their accountants or their computer programs don’t have to remember “Ottawa includes this in income but Quebec doesn’t.” (Although for computer programs, that should be a snap.) And while getting public services in English is sometimes a problem in Quebec, that’s never the case for tax help. When the result is raking in tax dollars more quickly and efficiently, the government is more than happy to talk to citizens in the language of their choice.

Quebec currently administers the GST in-province for the feds, so, in principle, also administering the income tax is not a big problem. And when you hear some of Ottawa’s objections the case for doing so only seems stronger. In part, it’s worried some federal revenue workers will lose their jobs. Well, Earth to Ottawa: We don’t have a tax system to guarantee jobs for tax collectors. We have a tax system to collect essential revenues as efficiently as possible. If fewer workers can raise the same revenue, that’s good, not bad. Of course, if Quebec were to take on the whole income tax job, it might — only might — need more tax bureaucrats. Some way presumably could be found, if the respective unions allowed, to have federal tax people come over to the Quebec side without losing seniority. At the same time, you don’t want any settlement arrangements to gobble up the entire efficiency gain, as so often happens when rent-seekers swarm.

By the same token, some arguments for the switch over seem just as weak. The federal NDP’S Quebec lieutenant, MP Alexandre Boulerice, says: “I think Quebecers would be more at ease sending their income taxes to the Quebec government rather than the federal government.” Some Quebecers might be, but lots of us Quebec federalists — who were a majority, remember, albeit a slim one, the last time a vote was taken on the independence question — are perfectly happy sending our taxes to Ottawa. Or, to rephrase that: We are no more unhappy sending our taxes to Ottawa than to Quebec. (Except maybe for NDP MPS, nobody’s really happy sending their taxes anywhere.)

It’s a pity that over the 100 years of its existence the federal income tax has become as much a symbol and instrument of our national government as almost anything else. But it has. Much of federalist constitutional policy since the 1960s has been to downgrade, de-emphasize and devolve the federal government’s role, both real and symbolic, in Quebec. Too often the federal Conservatives, playing a long-running and not very successful game of footsie with Quebec nationalists, have been willing cheerleaders in this devolution. Now the party wants to save Quebecers the embarrassment of having to send their tax dollars not even as far as Ottawa, but to a federal tax centre in Quebec run by Ottawa.

For the time being, separatism is quiescent in Quebec. But Quebecers do periodically elect separatist parties. The next time that happens, does Ottawa really want its most important revenue source to be in the hands of such a government? What mischief might follow then? None of our politicians is a Donald Trump (thank goodness!) so none seem to want to say something as impolite as that out loud. But for many of us Quebec federalists, the cost of filling out a separate federal tax form is more than worth it — just in case.

DOES OTTAWA REALLY WANT ITS MOST IMPORTANT REVENUE SOURCE TO BE IN THE HANDS OF SUCH A GOVERNMENT?