Scheer’s tax-cut pledges an opportunity for Liberals
Trudeau should demand to know which programs Conservatives plan to chop
Campaigning on promises to reduce taxes has been part of the Conservative playbook for decades now. Even if most Canadians do not feel they are much better off than they were 20 years ago, Stephen Harper did manage to reduce our overall tax burden.
So it is that Andrew Scheer is following in his footsteps. Tax cuts here, tax cuts there, tax cuts everywhere.
But given the distaste that the people of Ontario have developed for the tax-cutting government of Doug Ford, a significant line of attack against Scheer is opening up for the Liberals with every new tax he promises to reduce or eliminate.
Why? Because tax cuts come with a cost.
Even if Canadians are left with a few more dollars in their pockets when governments increase tax refunds, voters now understand that those dollars sometimes paid for things they liked.
So, my advice to Justin
Trudeau and his Liberals this week is to counter every tax-cut announcement made by Scheer by demanding to know which service will be scrapped to pay for it.
Some political parties are taking advantage of new powers given to the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) to analyze the cost of their campaign promises.
The Liberals, who bestowed that ability on the PBO, have, oddly, chosen not to subject their pledges to such scrutiny. They say they will provide a full costing of their platform at some future release. Which just makes them look shifty in the interim.
But even if we know the cost of the tax-cutting promises being made by Scheer, we are not yet being given a full accounting of what will be sacrificed in return.
And there are a lot of tax cuts that would happen under a federal Conservative government that would have to eventually be accounted for.
In addition to a universal tax cut for Canadians, Scheer is promising tax relief for senior couples, for small businesses, for transit riders, for parents and for home renovators. He is promising to cut the GST on home heating. And, of course, he is promising to scrap the carbon tax.
Trudeau has responded with tax-cut promises of his own. But he can do that because he has managed to convince large numbers of Canadians that deficits do not matter, that the debt-to-GDP ratio is what counts, and that balancing the books should not be a federal priority.
If your capacity for deficits has no limits, then cutting services is not a necessary outcome of tax reductions. Scheer, on the other hand, has been less enthusiastic about running up the numbers on the red side of the books.
Yes, he has abandoned promises to quickly balance the bottom line and has, instead, said a government led by him would not be in the black until 2024-25.
But he has also made commitments, largely in the form of tax cuts, that would create a deficit considerably in excess of $20 billion in the first year he is in office. So how will he get from negative $20 billion to zero in five years?
This is where politicians start talking about eliminating unspecified “inefficiencies.”
That’s what Doug Ford did when he campaigned to become Ontario premier in 2018. His promises included putting more money in the pockets of Ontarians through tax credits and tax reductions. Ford said those cuts would be financed by finding “efficiencies” that “exist all across the government.”
He didn’t mention until he got into power that what he intended were cuts to health care, education, legal aid and social services. And now his popularity is trying to find a floor to land on.
Likewise, Harper paid for his tax cuts with annual spending reductions of $5.2 billion starting in 2012. But he was reluctant to tell anyone exactly where those reductions were made, to the point of refusing to provide Kevin Page, who was then the Parliamentary Budget Officer, with information about them.
Scheer promises that, when his full platform is released in the coming weeks, it will explain
This is where politicians start talking about eliminating unspecified ‘inefficiencies.’
how he will eventually balance the books. Already he has said he will cut $1.5 billion in support to some corporations.
But that leaves a pretty big gap for him to make up with “efficiencies.”
Perhaps there will be a full itemization of the intended cuts by voting day. More likely they will be rolled into a larger bundle labelled “wasteful government spending.”
Which creates an opportunity for the Liberals.
Rather than trying to discredit Scheer with dubious allegations that he plans to criminalize abortion, they would do voters a service (and help their own cause) by forcing him to be clear about what he plans to cut. Ottawa freelance journalist Gloria Galloway has covered federal politics for more than 20 years.