Tax credits and goodies dangled for electors

TheConservatives are poised to continue their love affair with tax breaks this election season, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Since the campaign commenced on Sunday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced two new tax credit measures.

On Monday he announced the apprenticeship tax credit businesses receive for hiring apprentice tradespeople would go up to $2,500 from $2,000 and now cover the third and fourth years of apprenticeship training.

On Tuesday the PM announced the permanent return of the home renovation credit. This would give homeowners a yearly 15% tax credit on any renovations between $1,000 and $5,000.

What’s the problem with these two measures? The first helps promote recruitment to skilled trades, a great career choice for Canadian youth. The second may play a role in continuing home renovation spending, a $68-billion industry in Canada last year.

However, both buy into the notion that government knows best how to pick winners and losers.

Voters will get their fill of this sort of vote buying during the campaign from the Liberals and NDP.

For example, the Liberals promise to enact a new child benefit in place of the current Conservative universal child care benefit, and the NDP have promised a national day-care program that would cost parents just $15 a day.

We’d prefer government let people keep more of their own money, and figure out how to spend it, rather than doling out stimulus incentives to specific sectors or cooking up new benefit schemes.

We’ve long argued the best path forward is to reduce tax credits and lower general income tax rates for all Canadians.

That would require less red tape, fewer bureaucrats, fewer resources to administer — both for government and taxpayers — and reduce the size of government.

George Washington lost his first run for a seat in the Virginia colonial legislature in 1755 because he failed to ply local voters with enough beer, whiskey, rum punch and wine to win their votes. Fast forward to 2015 in Canada. The three major federal parties all plan to dangle tax credits and other goodies to court our vote — what passes these days for beer, whiskey, rum punch and wine. Everybody loves an election party. But we all pay for the hangover.