By: Robert Benzie - Toronto Star
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she would scrap the harmonized sales tax on energy bills if her party won the next provincial election.
To bankroll the $350 million reduction in hydro, natural gas and heating oil levies, the New Democrats would raise corporate taxes.
“Our focus is on trying to make life more affordable for folks,” Horwath said at Queen’s Park on Thursday.
She said her policy would save a family with two children about $220 a year in hydro and heating costs.
Horwath lamented that the governing Liberals have just rewarded Bay St. at the expense of Main St.
“The HST is coming in one pocket and going out the other pocket to huge corporate tax giveaways. We don’t think that was the right thing to do,” she said, adding the New Democrats would “claw back” recent corporate tax cuts and cancel scheduled reductions.
Finance Minister Dwight Duncan accused Horwath of jeopardizing Ontario’s recovery from the worldwide recession by making it harder for businesses to operate here.
“She’s proposing to raise taxes on the forestry sector in northern Ontario, she is proposing to raise taxes on the automotive sector in southern Ontario,” said Duncan.
“She’s proposing to put us out of competition with Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and New Brunswick.
“It is about the most short-sighted, dumb public policy pronouncement one can envision.”
Duncan noted the Liberals this week began paying out a new 10 per cent discount on hydro bills called the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit.
About four million Ontario households and 400,000 farms and small businesses will see savings on their hydro bills, but major power users will not qualify.
The new price break saves an average homeowner $153.60 annually, rising to $1,716 a year for a small business and $2,052 on a farm.
With such consumer-friendly policies, Duncan emphasized the Liberals have no plans to introduce further exemptions for the HST, which took effect last July 1 with the melding of the provincial sales tax and the federal GST.
While the New Democrats and the Liberals are sparring over policy differences, the Progressive Conservatives are playing their electoral cards close to their chests.
PC MPP Peter Shurman (Thornhill) would only say that “everything is on the table when it comes to taxes,” but the Tories have no intention of unveiling their election promises any time soon.
“Our attitude is not to put policy out there piecemeal. We are hard at work developing what will ultimately be a policy,” said Shurman.
“We will not be caught in the trap of putting out policy on a piecemeal basis.”
Conservative sources say that’s because they fear the Liberals might abscond with their best ideas.