Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s determination to hike payroll taxes, despite the negative impact that will have on job creation means the Conservative commitment to not raise taxes has already hit the scrap heap of a growing list of broken promises.
OTTAWA— Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has finally admitted what the experts have told him all along – it is not possible for the Conservatives government to eliminate the deficit in the current mandate while maintaining costly and ideologically-driven strategies like massive spending on prison expansion and untendered aircraft procurement.
The Conservatives refusal to moderate their wasteful and expensive crime and defence strategies, mean that regular families will have to bear the brunt, say Opposition leaders.
In the Conservatives’ 2011 Election Platform, most of the commitments made in the “Hard-Working Families” section were explicitly conditional on the budget being balanced first.
Flaherty’s new economic plan makes it clear that Conservative ideology will come ahead of the struggles of average families. By admitting that there will still be a multi-billion deficit even after then next fixed election date in 2015 – and that therefore the families platform will not be implemented – Flaherty has turned the Conservative platform into one long list of broken promises:
• Family Tax Cuts – income splitting: “We will soon be in a position to take an historic step forward to achieve greater fairness for families. We will establish the Family Tax Cut income sharing for couples with dependent children under 18 years of age. This will give spouses the choice to share up to $50,000 of the household income, for federal income-tax purposes. This important new measure will be implemented when the federal budget is balanced within our next full term of office.” (p. 26)
Of course, this means one additional platform promise will be broken: “Stephen Harper’s Government will eliminate the deficit and return to balanced budgets. We will achieve this without raising taxes.” (p. 22).
Flaherty’s determination to hike payroll taxes, despite the negative impact that will have on job creation means the Conservative commitment to not raise taxes has already hit the scrap heap of a growing list of broken promises.
