For a possible poison pill, the HST isn’t doing much damage.
Yesterday, I made mention to the fact there are some in the media hinting at the fact the conservatives may be trying to design their own toppling with the advent of the harmonized sales tax in Ontario and BC. From the same paper that brought us that speculation comes a perfectly good reason why it is that tactic isn’t about to work. Or, if it does, it likely won’t happen quickly. Of note, right now it’s the provincial liberals in both Ontario and BC that are catching flack for the tax change.
Harper engineered the arangement in such a way that the provincial premiers were the ones to announce the tax. He engineered it in such a way that the implementation of the proposed tax change, which is scheduled to take effect in July of 2010, would be left up to the provinces in question. And, and this is what might hand a heart attack to any purely liberal riding in Ontario or BC, it’s a tactic not any different than what the federal liberals did in atlantic Canada in 1997–a tax change that, to my knowledge at least, none of their governments since have tried to repeal.
While there’s no denying legislation of this variety would be damaging, it still remains fuzzy, at least to the Globe and Mail, as to exactly who it would be damaging to. Let’s try to recap it.
- The HST was announced just after Ontario’s budget last January. Criticism started almost immediately after information was released regarding exactly how popular a move that would be.
- NDP leader Jack Layton championed the cause federally, slamming Harper for daring to proceed with the measure.
- “Hey, the provinces said yes to it. Back off.” Latest defense from the conservatives’ Jim Flaherty, who promptly sidestepped the HST issue.
- Federal liberal leader Michael Ignatieff shoots himself in the foot, saying if an election is called and he wins, he won’t axe the tax. Oops.
And through it all, the federal conservatives just keep going up in the polls, while federal and provincial liberals keep going down. Coincidence? If you’re the Globe and Mail and you’re writing the article linked in the first paragraph, yes–most asuredly a coincidence. But if you’ve been watching how things have been playing out, you have to question just where that speculation comes from. Contrary to what most liberal party loyalists would have us believe, Stephen Harper isn’t a blithering idiot with no idea what he do. Neither, I would argue, is Michael Ignatieff–except we haven’t seen that side of him yet. Harper, though, and with Ignatieff’s unwitting help, has just managed to handcuff the liberals. By setting it up so that the liberal party in Ontario and BC takes the fall for it, with Ontario being one of the two provinces Harper needs to make a dramatic improvement in if he expects to gain a majority, he all but guarantees anyone not fond of the HST doesn’t vote liberal in the next election, whenever that might happen to be. As it stands now he’s called 4 bielections in order to fill vacant seats in the house of commons–this can’t be good for the liberals either. Best case, Harper walks away from all this with a majority. Worst case, another minority government, likely conservative. In either case, any seats lost in the coming election will more than likely wind up going to the NDP if anyone at all. And the NDP could certainly use them.
Harper is definitely engineering someone’s defeat. Whether his or Ignatieff’s it’s really hard to say at this point. But, if he ends up taking it on the nose, look for him to drag Ignatieff down with him. And Ignatieff would have walked himself right into it.
