Hon. James M. Flaherty

Minister of Finance

Dear Minister Flaherty:

Saw your recent letter warning Queen’s Park against illegal tax hikes.

Kind of you to b.c.c. (blind copy) us while blindsiding Charles Sousa, your provincial counterpart. You addressed the treasurer, but it’s clear your hit-and-write tactics were aimed at all Ontario voters.

Unsolicited advice, even unsolicited snarls, are always welcome. Thought I’d reciprocate. Perhaps we too can become pen pals.

Your latest letter takes federal-provincial pugilism to a new level of aggression — lecturing and hectoring Sousa by telling him what he already knows: That he cannot create a regional GTA sales tax, a tax he has neither imposed nor proposed.

You set up a straw man for our tax man, then burn it at the stake.

When the smoke clears, you grudgingly acknowledge Sousa has every legal right to raise the HST on a provincewide basis to help bankroll transit construction and infrastructure. In your next breath, you huff and puff about the perils of raising that tax from 13 to 14 per cent.

Ahem, let’s go back in time to 2001-02, when you reigned as Ontario’s mighty treasurer: What was the combined federal-provincial rate? Oh, right — an unforgivable 15 per cent. You presided over a sales tax higher than the one you now deem unbearable.

(True, as federal finance minister you carried out Stephen Harper’s opportunistic 2006 campaign promise to cut the old Tory GST from 7 per cent to 5 — a plan derided by economists for launching you on a track of perennial deficits.)

Now fast forward to your latest finger wagging. At the very time civic leaders are trying to bridge the gap between right and left, muting political gridlock in order to address traffic gridlock, you toss a hand grenade.

“We did not lower the GST to have it taken away from Ontarians by the Wynne government with a new sales tax hike,” you thundered.

Sousa replied to your broadside by seeking a meeting. Your response? Not even the courtesy of a reply. Just a couple of televised retorts and rants declaring that you won’t deign to meet Sousa until he first forswears his right to raise revenues dedicated to transit.

“If the government of Ontario can’t make that commitment, then I won’t meet with them,” you taunted.

Churlish diktats and puerile preconditions are poor form. I don’t recall you berating Manitoba for its April plan to hike its sales tax by one point, or Nova Scotia when it raised the HST. And I haven’t heard you offer more federal funding, beyond your paltry 4 per cent share of the billions required for transit.

How to explain your gratuitous, righteous, anti-Ontario rhetoric?

It’s a muscle reflex. You have never broken the habit of putting down the province you represent in Ottawa. A year ago, the PM had to rein you in for running down Ontario’s finances. In 2008 you recklessly advised investors, “The last place you will go is the province of Ontario.”

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And you’re working for the people of Ontario?

Thankfully, your bluster doesn’t reach beyond Parliament Hill and the gridlocked roadways of your Whitby-Oshawa riding. When you bizarrely tried to browbeat the big banks into raising their mortgage rates from a bargain-basement 2.99 per cent last March, they breezily ignored you (five-year rates didn’t budge for months).

Rather than make yourself more irrelevant, why not make common cause with the province on transit, given that you represent many of the same people? The train is leaving the station, and you are going in the wrong direction:

Janet Ecker, Ontario’s one-time Progressive Conservative treasurer (who took over from you in 2002), sits on the Metrolinx board and backs its recommendation for an HST hike allocated to transit and roads. John Tory, who defeated you for the provincial PC leadership in 2004, also argues that “dedicated” revenues are needed now.

Ontario’s Chamber of Commerce is also onside. So too is Toronto’s board of trade, which reacted to your provocative letter by seeking a meeting. You still haven’t made time for them — or us. Instead, you align yourself with a raving Rob Ford in the mayor’s hour of need, feeding your shared addiction to cracking provincial heads.

You cast yourself as a fearless tax fighter. But in the one area where you could truly help Ontario taxpayers — giving them equal treatment under your antiquated equalization program, which siphons $11 billion a year from this province to the rest of Canada — you continue to suck and blow and siphon at the same time. Last week, your erstwhile soul mates at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation complained that “Ontario taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick.” But not a word from our fiery finance minister.

Why do all these appeals for a fair hearing keep falling on deaf ears?

Stop dictating letters. Start taking meetings. Don’t just hector — help us!

Respectfully,

A GTA taxpayer and commuter