(Image: Amy Gizienski)
The Harmonized Sales Tax may be one of the Liberal government’s biggest weaknesses in the coming election, so they’ve opted to turn taxed lemons into taxed lemonade by convincing Ontarians that the tax is really in their best interest. (It helps, too, that Tim Hudak and the Tories are basically incoherent on this file.) So we aren’t surprised that Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is claiming that the HST is helping Ontario’s economy move out of the recession.
According to newly released data, Ontario’s economy in the third quarter of 2010 grew at an annualized rate of 1 per cent and has grown 3.6 per cent since the recession ended in mid-2009.
But a positive sign, especially for the Liberals’ fortunes in the Oct. 6 provincial election, was that business spending on machinery and equipment has increased by more than 10 per cent due to the tax reforms.
“It is certainly in part due to the HST because (of) business tax credits and so on, the input tax credits they get,” Duncan said in an interview.
Of course, it’s not all great news. Ontario continues to have fewer jobs than it did before the recession started, as the government noted in a release yesterday. It would be nice to be able to test Duncan’s assertion against another province without the HST in a similar situation, but frankly, the provincial economies are all apples, oranges and a durian or two. Comparisons aren’t easy between Ontario and, say, HST-less Manitoba.
The bigger problem for the Liberals isn’t the debate over the HST, where none of the parties look good. The problem is that if things are “getting better” at this glacial pace for the rest of the year, it’s hard to see Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals having a good answer to the basic election question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
• HST fuelling economic growth, Duncan says [Toronto Star]
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
No
January 12, 2011 at 12:22 pm | by My dog votesEven have to pay HST on the legal fees.
Thanks Dwight
http://thestar.blogs.com/broadsides/2009/11/bully-for-cheri-dinovo.html
I work for Minister Duncan. Good posting but one small mis-statement I believe. You refer to the job numbers. Ontario has actually recovered 96 per cent of the jobs lost during the recession which was noted in our release. You make the job recovery sound a lot further off. Thanks
January 14, 2011 at 2:25 pm | by Darcy McNeillThe Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny are saying business is much better since the HST was introduced.
The fact is the economy was already down in Ontario when the recession started.
March 20, 2011 at 9:10 am | by RobAll the HST does is improve a company’s cash flow. I know that because I am self employed. The HST has obviously made my services more expensive to consumers. As a result I am forced to either pass that expense on to consumers, or lower my prices.
Either way you look at it, we both lose. The only one who stands to gain, is the Provincial Government.
But they aren’t the only ones to blame; this HST and many other taxes introduced during the last 8 or 9 years, are a result of Federal Downloading costs to the Provinces.
It begun during the Martin Liberal days, and unfortunately has accelerated during Harper’s days. Should Harper win a majority, then his mandate to radically change the traditional role of the Federal Govn’t will make things much worse. Provinces will struggle to meet their obligations, while at the FED level, Harper will have a surplus to spend on whatever he wants to (should he win a majority).
But this Federal and this Provincial election are not about people and pesky Conservative or Liberal Ideologies; rather they should be about destroying the corrupt system that is in place for a better alternative for all Canadians.
Vote for nothing!
April 19, 2011 at 11:28 am | by rouchosThe global recession was hard on economies around the world. Ontario worked with people when others would have cut them loose. The economy is back on track. Ontario jobs are coming back and growth is returning. See the progress report here: http://bit.ly/k2ADga
July 5, 2011 at 12:29 pm | by Grahame Rivers