By: Antonella Artuso - Toronto Sun
The harmonized sales tax should come off all home heating bills including gas and oil, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says.
This tax cut would save average families about $220 a year, she said.
The Ontario treasury would forego about $350 million a year, but Horwath is promising to fill that hole by clawing back recent corporate tax cuts and cancelling further planned reductions.
“The bottom line is people are struggling still...the middle class is feeling like they’re not holding on any more,” Horwath said Thursday. “I believe our focus is going to be on making life more affordable for folks.”
Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said the NDP’s plan would hike taxes for important job-creating sectors such as the struggling forestry industry in the north and the fragile car industry in the south.
”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 said.
The Ontario Liberal government, which ushered in the HST, has chosen instead to provide exemptions in some areas, cuts to personal income tax, a sales tax credit and temporary rebates, he said.
Duncan said the government, which recently brought in a 10% cut on hydro bills, has no plans to provide further exemptions to the HST.
Under a deal struck between the province and federal government that saw $4.3 billion flow into Ontario in exchange for the introduction of the HST, the rate must stay at 13% for at least two years and exemptions cannot exceed 5% of the GST base.
Horwath hinted strongly she would take further measures to cut back the HST, but acknowledged her hands could be tied for a few years under the agreement.
Tory MPP Peter Shurman said his party is looking at significant tax relief as a key plank in its upcoming election platform, but would not provide specifics.
The Tories have no plan to roll back any tax cuts.
Duncan said the Conservatives would likely have to look at major cuts to health or education to balance the budget.
”People will smell a rat and that’s a rat,” he said.
Shurman said those kinds of drastic cuts are not on the table.
“We, under no circumstances, will touch frontline health care,” Shurman said.