The Charest government now turns to middle- and small-wage earners to cover increasing health-care costs instead of raising some of the taxes it massively decreased over the past years.
Strange? Not really, since this is mostly an ideological choice. Raising taxes - although the most progressive way of assuring public revenues - has simply become taboo.
Instead, this week's budget contains more regressive measures to be applied regardless of personal income levels: hiking various public charges, planned user fees of $25 per medical appointment, and an annual health-care tax to reach $200 per adult by 2012.
This is so inequitable that even the right-wing Action démocratique denounced it.
The health tax and user fees should collect $500 million a year. This comes after income taxes were slashed by $5.3 billion since 2003. And that's just the cuts for individuals.
The government also refused to take over the two GST points when Ottawa vacated them, thus depriving itself of about $2.5 billion a year. If you add tax cuts to business and other cuts over the years, the public purse is probably missing well over the $10 billion it could have collected.
With a projected deficit for 2010-2011 of $4.5 billion, if only a part of these cuts hadn't been forgone, chances are there'd be no deficit.
But cutting taxes is what conservative-minded politicians do. It's a "vision" thing. When they do, public services get starved and the private-sector profits from increased outsourcing in the delivery of services. We see it in the health-care system.
This classic conservative cycle is called "starving the beast." Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described it this way in his New York Times column: Politicians engage "in a game of bait and switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government's fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice ... And the deficit came."
Today, Krugman notes, given all the missing tax money, budgets remain in the red. "So the beast is starving, as planned," he writes. And the time comes when conservatives must "explain which parts of the beast they want to cut" because "they're adamantly opposed to reducing the deficit with tax increases."
That pretty much sounds like the modus operandi of this government. It "starved the beast" with massive tax cuts and its refusal to use the two GST points. So now it says it will cut spending - that means services - and turn to middle- and low-wage earners for extra revenue, instead of raising income taxes, the more equitable way to go. Krugman would not be surprised.
But these days, more people are on to this cycle. Even the neocon "Lucides" have lost some of their credibility. Now we have this massive rejection of the budget shown by yesterday's Léger Marketing/TVA poll.
Québec solidaire's Amir Khadir plans to mount a cross-country coalition to challenge medical user fees, arguing they violate the Canada Health Act. The Parti Québécois refuses to join in. A big mistake. This fight needs all the help it can get.
This week, a Globe and Mail editorial called it "a dramatic change of thinking." On the CBC, Dr. Raisa Deber of the University of Toronto said that user fees are "quite clearly a violation of the Canada Health Act. (...) It deters from necessary use (of services). It shifts the costs from government to private payers and it's usually higher. We've tried it multiple times ... it didn't work very well."
But this is a majority government with a stubborn premier. Witness his refusal to investigate the construction industry despite mounting allegations of corruption and collusion.
But Liberals should ponder the possibility that the more inequitable measures of this budget could destroy what little confidence voters have left in them.
Ironically, in the meantime, Quebecers will be left looking to the Canada Health Act and the rest of Canada to persuade their own premier to back down.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Charest+government+shows+conservative+roots/2755632/story.html#ixzz0kEii2xKB