Ontario health tax review called a `sham'
August 6, 2008
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Rob Ferguson
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU
Ontario's controversial health premium is being reviewed but the process is a "sham" because Premier Dalton McGuinty has already decided the tax is here to stay, opposition MPPs said yesterday.
That makes it unlikely Ontarians will see any changes to the levy, despite pleas from several municipalities that it be amended so that thousands of their workers no longer get the premium covered by taxpayers.
"The problem is this is a sham of a process," Progressive Conservative MPP Tim Hudak said after a legislative committee hearing into the tax yesterday.
Hudak (Niagara West-Glanbrook) accused the premier of putting "his hands over his ears."
"Dalton McGuinty has no intention of changing this tax despite the problems that are pointed out with it and despite the fact we've learned taxpayers are paying for it twice."
The mayor of London told the Legislature's finance committee that her city – through residential property taxes – is footing a bill of more than $800,000 a year for the health premiums of some civic workers.
That happened after arbitrators ruled their union contracts are worded in a way that makes their employer responsible for paying the tax, which the government intended to be paid by individuals only. Several other cities are in the same situation.
"Whatever the details, there have clearly been unintended consequences to local property taxes," said Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best.
The review that began yesterday is required under the 2004 legislation that created the premium of up to $900 per person.
The premium will raise almost $3 billion this year.
"They're going through the motions with these hearings," said New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns (Toronto-Danforth). He urged the government to exempt people earning less than $48,000 annually from the health premium.
The tax was passed less than a year after McGuinty's election promise not to raise taxes without a referendum. The premier has stated several times in the last year that the tax will stay because the government needs the money to help fund the rapidly rising cost of health care for an aging and growing population.
"The Ontario Health Premium has helped the government's ability to improve health care," said a statement from Finance Minister Dwight Duncan's office, noting wait times have been shortened in several areas, and hospitals are being modernized.
One citizen presenting his views to the committee said he's been to a hospital twice in the last few years and hasn't noticed any improvement, waiting nine hours in a Windsor emergency ward recently.
"It seems to be an excessive amount of time," said Andrew Dowie, who lives in the Windsor suburb of Tecumseh.
Kevin Gaudet, of the Ontario Taxpayers Federation, said the government should consider phasing out the tax to help Ontarians get by during the current economic slowdown.
Tabuns dismissed Liberal arguments that voters would not have elected the government to a second majority government last fall if the health premium was as unpopular as critics charge.
"The last election got swept away by faith-based (school) funding and there are a whole range of very important issues that didn't get addressed," Tabuns said. "That issue didn't get on the agenda as it should have."
Toronto Star
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