The HST is adding a great deal to the heating bills for people in Ontario and BC. In Ontario the bill has actually gone up 17% due to the increased profit margin granted to electricity providers. The Ontario provincial NDP are asking that the Premier remove the 8% provincial portion from the hydro bill in order to help many low and middle income families cope. To date the request has fallen on deaf ears.
Federally, the NDP Leader Jack Layton has asked Prime Minister Harper, to reduce the HST on heating bills. Being the ever right wing protagonist, Brian Lilley at Eye On the Hill, a SUN media blog, came out with a story today with only half the facts, stating that Jack Layton was a Climate Change denier.
Lilley conveniently failed to read all of Jack's media release. Layton calls for reducing the HST and measures to assist people retrofit their homes to assist in reducing heating costs. You can read Brian's misrepresentation here and Jack's press release here.
2 comments:
I agree with Jack, but part of the problem with the HST is that it is now a Federally controlled sales tax and other than possible rebates I do not believe it is that easy to make ongoing changes provincially.
Which then makes me question how much thought our Ontario provincial government put into the implementation of the HST. If being a federal sales tax means that you are now gaining new sources of revenue from items and services that were not taxed provincially before, why didn't you reduce the tax rate going in.
There is obviously some room without decreasing the overall tax revenue.
Instead it was arrogance and now apparently no response.
The province could convince the feds to make changes if the Province wanted them. Of course the Province did not consider the cost of HST on families heating bills well, or they felt it wouldn't be a big problem.
And the feds, we know how likely they are to reduce any part of the GST portion of the HST.
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