{"id":5215,"date":"2014-01-15T14:45:20","date_gmt":"2014-01-15T19:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=5215"},"modified":"2014-01-15T14:45:20","modified_gmt":"2014-01-15T19:45:20","slug":"the-truth-about-tory-tax-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/the-truth-about-tory-tax-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"The “truth” about Tory “tax tales”"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are several things wrong with the Harper government\u2019s never-ending claims that they are brilliant tax cutters.
\nTo start with, it\u2019s untrue.
\nTheir first fiscal decision after taking office in 2006 was to increase personal income taxes. Later that fall, they imposed a toxic new Conservative tax on Income Trusts which obliterated $25-billion from the savings accounts of two million ordinary Canadians.
\nMore recently, Mr. Harper has increased the overall federal tax burden in each of his last four budgets \u2013 taxing everything from hospital parking fees and cosmetic wigs for cancer patients to local credit unions and job creation.
\nConservative claims about lower taxes for families need a scrupulous reality check. For example, MP Lois Brown says that “the average family of four is paying $3,200 less in federal taxes.”
\nBut it all depends on what type of “family” you’re talking about.
\nYou can construct an illustration which would fit the Conservative model — with two parents, two children, a six-figure income and consumer spending of more than $50,000 every year (including over a thousand dollars for art lessons). But for most families \u2013 in fact, for 70-percent of Canadian families — this is simply not their reality
\nThe vast majority of middle-class Canadians haven\u2019t seen a significant improvement in their real incomes for the better part of 30 years. But their living costs have gone up and debt-loads have ballooned. For every dollar of disposable income, Canadians are carrying $1.64 in household debt.
\nMany are concerned about affording post-secondary education for their kids, or having no pension plan at their place of employment, or finding decent childcare or long-term care for their parents. Nearly three-quarters of Canadians worry that their children will not do as well as they have done.
\nAnd then there\u2019s Mr. Harper\u2019s new federal debt burden to take into account. He has run six consecutive deficits so far, adding more than $165-billion to Canada\u2019s overall debt-load.
\nThat works out to $5,000 in new Conservative debt for every man, woman and child in this country, or $20,000 for every family of four. Any tax cuts claimed by Mr. Harper are paid for with borrowed money.
\nSo, there is no room to be complacent about the needs of Canada’s middle-class and all those striving so hard just to get there.<\/p>\n

Ralph Goodale, MP
\nDeputy Leader, Liberal Party of Canada<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are several things wrong with the Harper government\u2019s never-ending claims that they are brilliant tax cutters. To start with, it\u2019s untrue. Their first fiscal decision after taking office in 2006 was to increase personal income taxes. Later that fall, they imposed a toxic new Conservative tax on Income Trusts which obliterated $25-billion from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1m7","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-05 15:17:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}