Worst Government Ever? – Part Three

Taxation

This is the third in a three part series, examining whether the government of Shawn Graham can pull off an historic feat, becoming the worst government in New Brunswick history.

Finally, the biggest power of the provincial government is controlling our taxes. As already mentioned, the Graham Gang sent quite a clear signal to the national and international business community in their first budget when they raised business taxes by 500% - many of them just packed up and left. Now the Graham Liberals feel bad however, and they want to give some of that back, as the Premier has suggested that now they believe in lower taxes and as much as $100 million could be returned to us. That's great, except that the original tax hike was more than $135 million, and when you add in the new fee increases worth more than $15 million for driver licenses and marriage certificates, we still seem to be paying more than we were before.

This is a great example of the Shawn Graham "re-back-tracking" on an issue. Because before the election he never talked about raising taxes. Then right after the election they paid someone to do a study that said we could have a major million dollar deficit and that they had to raise taxes to fix the deficit. Only, when the final results came in there was no deficit but a major surplus of more than $200 million. But then they said they were going to keep the taxes high so they can pay for more government services (and pay people more salaries and bonuses). Recently Shawn Graham announced that NB is actually (for real) running a $300 million deficit and worse news ... it's going to be even bigger next year. But now that the deficit is real he also feels it is the right time to lower taxes, and spend an extra billion dollars on capital projects that only provide temporary jobs, which will make the deficit bigger and leave more money for our kids to pay off.

So to summarize: If you have a fake deficit you have to raise taxes. If you have a real surplus - you keep the extra tax money anyway. But if you have a real deficit then that's the time to cut taxes and increase spending. John Maynard Keynes must be rolling in his grave.

To give the government some credit – even a stopped clock is right twice a day - they did decrease the tax on gasoline by a few cents per litre after they got elected. The fact that research done by the Moncton Times & Transcript shows we still seem to be paying the same prices as people in Nova Scotia, despite our lower taxes, probably only means that the oil companies are now using our tax breaks to collect extra profits. But hey, oil companies are people too.

Worst government ever? - You be the judge.