Greens, The True Conservatives

As the Green candidate in Prince George - Peace River, I published the following response to Jay Hill (the local MP) in the local papers:

In response to a recent announcement of the Green Party’s Climate Plan, Jay Hill has criticised the Greens’ tax policies and suggested that we do not recognize the importance of low taxes. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

As a manager in the family business here in Fort St. John, I understand the importance of low taxes and the serious effects of high fuel prices. We are shipping building materials into town from hundreds of miles away and then delivering them in and around the Peace River region. When fuel prices rise, we are quite literally caught in the middle and faced with the consequences of high transportation costs. And, not just us, but all Canadians—especially northern Canadians—feel the effects of high prices. Therefore, it is important to understand a few points regarding the Green Party’s taxation policies and how they compare to the policies of the Conservatives in Ottawa.

1. The Conservatives have increased the spending of the federal government rather than lowered it as promised and therefore cannot provide real tax-relief.
2. The Greens are calling for a revenue-neutral tax-shift that will lower personal income taxes and reward hard-working and responsible citizens.

In addition to their commitment to balancing budgets and paying down the debt, Greens support a substantial reduction in personal income taxes. The budget would be balanced through the elimination of wasteful spending as well as taxation upon the consumption of resources and pollution. This is something that Jay Hill failed to mention in his attack on the Green Party’s taxation policies—Greens are dedicated to smaller government, less wastefulness in Ottawa, and responsible fiscal management. Therefore, we are committed to lowering taxes on the “goods” (e.g. income from hard-working families) and gradually taxing the “bads” (e.g. fossil fuel consumption and irresponsible pollution). By shifting the taxes off the things we would like to encourage and onto things we would like to discourage, we can begin to create a government and a Canada that is less wasteful, more responsible, and more efficient—a Canada that is healthy and prosperous.

In a real sense, the Greens are more thoroughly conservative than the Harper Conservatives (who have unfortunately learned a lot from their Liberal predecessors). Whereas the Greens seek to put an end to big-government spending and big-government wastefulness, the Harper Conservatives in Ottawa have only increased the spending—and, increased it by a whopping $13.8-billion in their first year! Indeed, this is the second largest increase in federal spending since the budget was balanced in 1997/98. In other words, there have been quite a few Liberal budgets that were more conservative than the Conservatives’ budget. Sadly, more increases are planned for the 2007/08 fiscal year where spending is set to reach almost $200-billion.

The Green Party’s tax-shift will put more money in the pockets of hard-working and prudent Canadians who make efforts to be more efficient in their consumption of fossil fuels. The Conservatives’ meagre reduction of the GST by 1%, however, is little more than a front to hide their tax increases. As John Williamson (the Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation) has noted, the Harper Conservatives fail to grasp the need for tax reform. For example, Williamson points out that GST revenues were $33-billion in fiscal 2005 and Ottawa will collect $30-billion from GST in fiscal 2007. That is, the Conservative GST reduction only lowers taxes by $3-billion. On the other hand, the revenues from personal income taxes totalled $104-billion two years ago, and Ottawa is set to collect $115-billion this year and then $121-billion next year! The Greens would like to see fiscal reform that significantly reduces these levels of income taxation.

For us Greens, who take pride in our ability to conserve, eliminate waste, and plan ahead for the future, our fiscal responsibility goes hand in hand with our environmental conservation. We believe that a thorough and genuine conservativism will develop policies that are built upon these two pillars. We hope that Jay Hill and the Conservatives in Ottawa will begin to show themselves to be conservative in more than name and begin to take on the principled policies of the Green Party.

We not only take fuel taxes seriously but, like most Canadians, we take all taxes seriously and would like to see responsible fiscal reform. Therefore, we in the Green Party are calling for a tax-shift that will avoid big government spending and will reward hard work, efficiency, and innovation. These are values that are important in the Green Party and important to us in northern BC. My hope is that they will also become important to those in Ottawa.