Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

It's…it's….as though David Dodge predicted it!…

by Paul Wells on Thursday, March 19, 2009 10:43pm - 17 Comments

Quebec budget announces a one-point hike in the provincial sales tax for 2011. That’ll raise almost enough money to make up for the $700 million tax cut Jean Charest favoured Quebecers with after the federal government “fixed” the “fiscal imbalance.”

Other budget highlights: new arts spending that doesn’t quite replace the amount of the cuts that got Charest so exercised last autumn. A freeze on social-science research grants. Not a dime of new core university funding. Not a syllable about increasing tuition fees so universities can get more of the money they need from students. No links; it’s all too depressing.

UPDATE: Okay, one link. The finance minister used economic projections that assume half the economic contraction most private-sector forecasters are predicting. So the real world will probably be a lot worse than this budget! This clinches it: Charest wants to replace Harper, and he’s demonstrating that there would be perfect continuity in budgeting.

SIMULTANEOUS REBUTTAL-DATE: Stephen Gordon rather likes the thing, because of the one thing that runs counter to perfect Harper-Charest budget continuity: that PST hike.

Tags: Jean Charest

More by Paul Wells

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

I am officially declaring Monday, the 23rd of March, 2009, a Good News Day. No one will misallocate scarce tax revenue; no one will disgrace Westminster government; no one will be caught taking steroids; no one will predict the end of the recession by June. Instead our leaders will behave honestly, speak candidly, and plan wisely. Mark it on your calendar.

madeyoulook

Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town,
Nobody OD’d, nobody burnt a single building down…

Neil from Calgary

But until then, and in the days following, it’s steady as she goes?

http://www.jackmitchell.ca Jack Mitchell

You may want to switch off your television this weekend, that’s all I’m saying.

Critical Reasoning

That sounds ominous.

DR

“What’s missing is any mention that the population in those provinces has been growing at two to three times Quebec’s rate, while they had long been penalized by the arcane formula used to determine health-care funding.”

What arcane formula is Yakabuski talking about here? The associated equalization that Ontario was so displeased with?

Andrew (not Potter or Coyne)

Ontario gets shafted in other ways, notably EI benefits.

http://www.maple-leaf-forever.com Lord Bob

Okay, can somebody in Ottawa go to the Peace Tower and talk Paul out of jumping? At least, not until he records that next Wells/Coyne video thing.
http://worthwhile.typepad.com Stephen Gordon

About tuition fees. If there had been a tuition freeze, I would have been very annoyed. But last year – or was it the year before|? – they started a program of gradually increasing fees by something like $100/year, and that schedule doesn’t seem to have been altered by the budget.

Paul Wells

True. But in 2003-2004, the most recent year I could find quickly, the Canada average tuition was $4,025, and in Quebec $1,862. That gap doesn’t close quickly at $100 a year.

http://worthwhile.typepad.com Stephen Gordon

Indeed. But I’ve been watching the Quebec tuition file so long that I’ve come to be pitifully grateful for measures that aren’t completely boneheaded. I don’t expect to see the day when this sort of analysis will ever guide policy:

http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2007/10/how-increasing-.html

http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Mr Gordon If you are still around, could you briefly explain your desire to play hokey-pokey with PST cut/increase. Why would it be good to give people incentives to purchase large items now before they are hit with major price increase next year? Wouldn’t Quebec just go back in the mire next year after Quebecers made all their major purchases this year.

I am for any tax cuts but I don’t understand why you would want to raise the tax the following year. Wouldn’t it squash demand?

Wascally Wabbit

Paul Wells – the celebrated cynical oracle!
So – oh wise one – any predictions when Harper will be pushed off the cliff and Charest moved in to the vacuum?
I must say – when I keep reading of the Diane Finleys, and the Christine Elliotts looking for jobs in Ontario – I wonder whether they are looking to take up the slack when their partners lose their current influential positions.
Cool Blue

The PST increase will actually make Harper happy.

He’s been saying all along since the GST cut that if the provinces need money they should raise it themselves instead of asking for handouts from the feds. Specifically, he’s pointed out that they can raise their PST since he’s given them room with his GST cut.

madeyoulook

Bingo. Whatever province did NOT immediately raise its sales tax by a percentage point when the fed cut its GST lost all bitching authority over the fiscal imbalance.

Yeswap

Glad I am not related to Paul Wells, it would be like being associated with a battery with one connection pole—Negative.
Never read his MacLeans input any more, almost enough to cancel my subscription.
stan squires

I am from vancouver and i wanted to comment on what David Dodge said. The Jacobins of 1793 belonged to the most revolutionary class of the eighteenth century.The town and country poor,it was against this class,which had in fact (and not just in words) done away with its monarch,its landowners and its moderate bourgeoisie by the most revolutionary measures, including the guillotine.-Against this truly revolutionary class of the eighteenth century- That the monarchs of europe combined to wage war.
The Jacobins of the twenty-first century would not guillotine the capitalists-to follow a good example does not mean coping it.It would be enough to arrest fifty to a hundred financial magnets and bigwigs, the chief knights of embezzlement and of robbery by the banks. It would be enough to arrest them for a few works to expose their frauds and show all exploited people (who needs wars for obtaining markets). Upon exposing the frauds of the banking barons, we could release them,placing the banks, the capitalist syndicates and all contractors working for the gov. under workers control.