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No less an authority than Kevin O’Leary denounces the idea as “B.S.” Andrew Scheer recites a convoluted story involving Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, while Steven Blaney is content with the logically unassailable “a tax is a tax is a tax.” All rely heavily on eye-rolling appeals to what “everybody knows,” time-honoured slogan of the clued-in and the wised-up. As in: everybody knows there’s no such thing as a revenue-neutral tax reform.

This would be at least conventional, if the politicians in question were in another party: if Conservatives were warning the public that Liberals could not be trusted to bring in one tax without cutting another. It’s somewhat bizarre to hear Conservatives say that of themselves. Surely it would be within the Conservatives’ power to decide whether such a tax were revenue neutral or not. The logic of their position is not only that Chong is lying, but that if he were elected leader, the party would be powerless to pursue any other course.

I can’t think they mean revenue neutrality is impossible: it’s a simple enough matter to cut taxes — simpler, and more popular, than imposing new ones. So instead they must mean it is unlikely. And the evidence for that, presumably, is that it has not been so in similar situations in the past. Why, remember when the GST was brought in — by the Tories, if memory serves — how it was supposed to be “revenue neutral.” How did that turn out, huh?

Interesting question. The GST was indeed not a new tax but a replacement for the old Manufacturers’ Sales Tax. And contrary to mythology, it took less out of Canadians’ pockets, proportionately, than the tax it replaced. You could look it up: In its last year in operation, fiscal 1990, the 14 per cent MST accounted for 15.3 per cent of federal revenues, equal to about 2.7 per cent of GDP. At its height in fiscal 2006, the seven per cent GST — it has since been cut to five per cent — added up to 14.9 per cent of revenues, or 2.4 per cent of GDP.