Harmony

Way back there in Elementary School, my teachers always said that the Atlantic Provinces had it the worst in the tax scene. Why? The Harmonized Sales Tax, of course! But before I get into what has happened when provinces have introduced the tax, and what the consequences are for the federal and provincial governments of this province, let's look into how this great thing came into being.

The year was 1991 and just after Mr. Mulroney had dumped the GST off on to us, over in Saskatchewan the then Progressive Conservative Premier of Grant Devine (who I must say has an epic first name), decided to combine the PST and GST into one tax, the HST. Unfortunately, this meant that Saskatchewanians were forced to pay more because now everything had the HST on it, rather than just the PST, or solely the GST. Later that year, when the voting booths were opened up, voters didn't feel so strongly about the Tories anymore. The New Democratic Party there would win the election and soon form a majority government under the leadership of Roy Romanow. A good day for New Democrats; anyways, going back on topic...

By 1996, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland all jumped on the HST band wagon; however before combining the taxes, the PST was lowered to 8%. (Wow! The PST before then was 9%, ouch!) By April 1st, 1997 the Harmonized Sales Tax had come into effect and was 15%. At the time of the merger, all three of the provinces had Liberal governments, and all would elect Progressive Conservative governments not long after this. Today the HST is 13% in the Atlantic Provinces due to the GST cuts by Mr. Harper.

For a decade all was quite on the HST front, until March 2009. When the Government of Ontario announced they would implement the new tax on July 1st, 2010. Not long after this, the Government of British Columbia would also announce that they too would create the HST by the same date.

To date, all of the provinces that have implemented the HST have all been defeated, and while we over here in British Columbia believe that it might be another four years until we get rid of our terrible premier, we must remember, Gordon Campbell has a slim chance of victory in 2013 with 32% support in the polls. Also, from what I see over in Ontario, McGuinty doesn't look great as of now.

The Government of British Columbia currently argues that the HST will bring the province out of recession, and yet it takes little though to comprehend what this tax will really do. If people have less money, they will buy less, which in turn will hurt business, which will eventually lead to the company losing money, and finally cutting jobs. But, Gordon Campbell and Colin Hansen maintain that the HST will create jobs. In reality, it is going to do the exact opposite. Nevertheless, New Democrats in both BC and Ontario are opposed to this tax grab, and I support their campaign against this terrible idea 100%.