Unpublished: Worthy of Obama

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Apr 2013


In asking the business community to help get the right thing done, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has embarked on a course of reasoning worthy of Barak Obama.

The "right thing" in this case is building support for a large expansion in public transit.  Wynne in a parenthetical way offered specious, unproven assertions and straw men as reasons why a large expansion in public transit was good in itself, and therefore the "right thing" to do.

What was not said in the speech was that support for public transit translates in her mind into support for the means by which the large expansion in public transit will be funded: road tolls, sales tax increases, and higher taxes on gasoline.

What also was created by that speech was the basis for proceeding as she sees fit.  If business will not support doing the right thing, they are manifestly on the side of evil and Premier Wynne will force the province down the path of righteousness in spite of the obstacles placed in her path!

Truly Obama-like in technique.

Proving that it takes a lefty to beat a lefty, Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath outed the Premier (so to speak) on the regressiveness of the funding methods.  Road tolls and higher taxes are the same for everyone, regardless of income.  Premier Wynne is asking business to work with her to raise the cost of living on the employees of those businesses.  Meanwhile, Wynne is offering businesses a $1.3 billion tax break each year for managing the harmonized HST.  The elimination of that tax break would go most of the way towards paying the cost of expanding public transit.

Well played by Horwath.

The fact is that Ontarians are already taxed to the hilt.  Any increase in taxes results in a noticeable drop in the standard of living.  The average Ontarian will simply have less money to spend because the government took it.

The government is not a good steward of the resources they are given by the taxpayers, and the proof of that is all the money, license fees, road taxes, gasoline taxes, and so on that go into the general revenue fund in excess of that spent on transportation.  David Peterson once promised that a $5.00 per tire tax would be used to fund the disposal of old tires; and his successors over the last twenty-five years have cheerfully taken the money but not fulfilled the promise.

The vast sucking maw of medicare and education will continue to take money from all tax sources like an ever-expanding open pit mine consumes the town the miners lived in.

There is no point whatever in giving government more taxes.  It already tries to do too much.  And giving the government leave to expand public transit will only make matters worse.  The Ontario government is running out of other people's money.
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