There is a well-established contradiction at the heart of politics. We hate paying taxes, but we appreciate the services they pay for. Politicians of different ideological stripes tend to manage that tension differently. Usually conservatives focus on the burden of taxation, while liberals emphasize the benefits it yields.

Certainly Prime Minister Stephen Harper has done his part. In 2009 he said, “I don’t believe that any tax is a good tax,” and he seems to have meant it: his government has intensified a 25-year tradition of federal cutting. But who among our national party leaders is willing to oppose the prime minister’s absolutist anti-tax position, to defend the role of government to improve our collective well-being?

Apparently not Tom Mulcair, leader of the supposedly progressive opposition.

During the NDP leader’s trip to Newfoundland last week, Mulcair told the St. John’s Telegram that if he were elected prime minister he would never, under any circumstances, raise “personal” — that is, presumably, non-corporate — taxes. “That is never going to be part of my policies,” he said. “Period. Full stop.”

That’s a level of certainty that might give comfort to those worried about a spendthrift NDP government, but ought to give pause to the progressives most likely to vote for the party.

It’s one thing for a conservative like Harper to take taxes off the table. The prime minister has been clear about his belief in smaller government, if not always true to it (federal spending has kept rising during his time in office). But for Mulcair, who has bemoaned again and again the cost of government cuts, it raises a conundrum: How does he plan to restore government, or at least the parts of it he misses, without raising new revenues?

Mulcair’s answer so far has been that he will move money around. “You can order your priorities differently,” he told Maclean’s. “Yes, there is enough money there. This is the type of thing that has to be done with a scalpel.”

But that’s nothing more than the thinking man’s “Stop the gravy train.” Mulcair says he is sure there’s enough money in government coffers to do whatever he might want to do as prime minister. But without saying what that is, or what organs he is willing to surgically remove to pay for it, he leaves us wondering how he can be so certain — or what kind of country we might end up with if he won. The parliamentary budget office established last year that the Conservatives won’t be able to meet their deficit-reduction targets through efficiencies alone. Would Mulcair’s targets be less ambitious? Would his government be smaller?

If the NDP leader is truly a progressive, it’s hard to see his “read my lips” moment as anything more than political pandering. That’s a shame. Especially because taxes are not the prohibitive political taboo they were before the 2008 financial meltdown. A recent Environics survey showed that 64 per cent of Canadians say they would pay a bit more to fund health care, pensions and higher education, while 83 per cent favour a tax hike on the very rich. Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama and Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath both pushed through new taxes last year without suffering any apparent political injuries.

Politicians across the spectrum typically view taxation as a last resort. And that’s probably a good thing. But Mulcair can’t be certain of what, in perpetuity, we will collectively be willing to pay for. By taking possible tax increases off the table, we blinker our vision of what’s possible. The leader of the New Democrats, of all people, should know that.

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