As the Ontario government released its austerity-focused budget last week, a few lawyers have come up with a viable solution: raise taxes.
Of course, some critics would argue the Ontario government did just that by putting off planned corporate tax cuts. But in an age of troubled government finances around the world, arguing that putting off tax cuts after years of already reducing them is going too far.
Now isn’t the time to cut taxes even more given the massive deficits the province faces.
As
Law Times reported on
page 2 this week, a new group called Lawyers for Fair Taxation is calling on the government to impose escalating surtaxes on society’s wealthiest people.
For the very rich earning more than $1.8 million a year, the surtax would be six per cent. That levy, along with lower amounts on people earning more than $100,000 a year, would bring in billions, the group argues. It echoes a similar call by a new group formed by doctors.
The call comes as the government gets set to introduce new spending cuts and, perhaps most controversially, impose wage and pension restraint on the province’s public-sector workers.
Unions, of course, are vowing to fight those plans and are likely to launch litigation at some point should the government legislate the measures.
Ontarians, then, can brace themselves for a few years of labour unrest. The unions, however, never really lay out how they expect governments struggling with massive deficits to pay for demands for wage increases and continued pension benefits that most taxpayers themselves don’t have.
Instead, they rail against the governments for imposing restraint and go on strike only to see politicians like former premier Mike Harris and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford take power in subsequent elections. How the unions believe they win in those scenarios is a mystery.
A more reasonable scenario might be for those unions to join groups like Lawyers for Fair Taxation in calling for higher taxes.
Unions, of course, have always talked about the need for progressive taxation, but it’s time for them to be more vocal about that issue if they’re not willing to accept meaningful restraint.
While that would be the most honest approach, it’s clear that the current political environment doesn’t favour tax increases.
So while the lawyers’ group is certainly valiant in calling for higher taxes even for themselves, it’s more realistic to expect the government to look for measured spending cuts before going down that route.
In terms of public-sector workers, they’ve had several years of reasonable contract settlements following the cutbacks of the Harris years. Now’s the time for them to do their part in putting the province on a better financial footing.
If the government still finds itself in dire straits after that process, only then should it consider the proposals of the new fair-tax groups given the political realities.
— Glenn Kauth
