Low-tax mantra misleading

Re Budget watchdog predicts $1B deficit, July 23 The Conservatives told us their plan to reduce taxes was good for the country. Reminds me of the disastrous low-fat diet craze. While we were obsessing about lowering the quantity of fat in a serving, we overlooked the corresponding sugar increase that was introduced to make the food palatable.

Instead of improving our health, the low-fat mania ended up increasing our weight and our chance of getting diseases such as diabetes and heart problems. The new message, just starting to get through, is that some fat is actually good for us.

There have been negative repercussions related to our acceptance of the promise of prosperity with tax cuts. We are in a recession and health care, affordable higher education and proper infrastructure are all reasonable endeavours funded by taxes.

Attacking the amount of fat we eat and the amount of taxes we pay has not worked. I don’t want a huge tax increase, but I do want to stop hearing that “all taxes are bad.” My overall health improved when I stopped buying only low-fat products. Let’s hope that our country’s general health also will improve when we stop following the “lower taxes are always better” refrain. Russell Pangborn, Keswick Stephen Harper’s attack on Justin Trudeau’s “budgets balance themselves” line may soon ignite an implosion of fortunes for the omnipotent Conservative Grand Poobah, who impetuously ditched the prudent Red Tory Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s sound policies and steered Canada back into deficit with a barrage of tax cuts while oil commodity storm clouds were gathering.

We shouldn’t buy into Harper’s fear-mongering hysterics about terrorism, as he is merely deflecting our attention from the reality of a crumbling currency and economy. David C. Searle, Toronto

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