Muskeg Press

All right, British Columbia, let me get this straight: you voted against a tax cut? And you were led by an old guy with a funny voice, who used to be the premier of the province but left the office in scandal over 20 years ago?

I have to admit, B.C., I’m torn. As a firm supporter of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), I was frustrated to see it voted down in the recent referendum, especially as it was supposed to drop from 12 per cent to 10 per cent in a few years. But all this craziness over the past two years is the reason why I love this place – never a dull moment on the Left Coast.

Ah well, life goes on, and we’ve all got bigger problems than worrying about whether or not a tax will be or won’t be here. Ten or twenty years down the road, however, we’ll be feeling a financial crunch as more and more people depend on the government for their health care and pensions. So, on behalf of everyone under the age of 40 who’s going to have to find a way to pay for all that, let me just say: “thanks.” (I’m hoping sarcasm transmits properly over the Internet.)

It would be easy to blame Bill Vander Zalm or the NDP for exchanging short-term political gain for long-term citizen pain, but in the end, it’s not their fault. No, the blame for this devastating loss should be put squarely on the shoulders of the B.C. Liberals.

Remember the provincial election campaign of 2009? Really? I don’t. Well, actually, I guess there was one phrase that now defines that campaign: the HST was “not on the radar” of the B.C. Liberals, who went on to be elected the governing party. Then, before you could say “value-added tax,” the government said the HST would be in effect by next July, and the legislation was rammed through in the spring. Small businesses apparently entered financial Armageddon as that extra two per cent destroyed their bottom lines. All the while, one government minister or another praised the HST, saying it helped B.C. remain competitive – but never actually saying how it helped us remain competitive.

Last fall, the government was extremely humbled after an access-to-information request showed provincial bureaucrats were corresponding with their federal counterparts about implementing the HST. Before the 2009 election. Then Gordo called for a referendum, then quit, then Carol James was forced out, then Christy Clark rode back into the B.C. Liberal fold and called for an early mail-in referendum, and then, Friday, the results.

And all the while, the B.C. Liberals didn’t ever seem to want the tax, even though they argued for it in the beginning, and economist after economist kept arguing that the tax was a good thing for the province. An independent report released in May stayed neutral, but clearly showed all the benefits of moving to the HST. Whether or not the report was truly neutral is irrelevant. The Liberals should have used the findings from it and kept pounding its main messages to the electorate: creation of tens of thousands of jobs, financial stability in the future, easier method for businesses to remit their taxes. At the very least, someone could have said, “we really screwed up with the whole ‘radar’ reference, but we don’t know how to use metaphors. We’re politicians, after all, not English majors.”

But they didn’t do any of those things. They did, however, announce a two per cent cut to the HST – by 2013, the tax would be 10 per cent, not 12 per cent. They promised it, they enshrined it in legislation. A tax cut. How often does that happen? I kept waiting for the government to come swiftly out of the gates, sending its ministers to the far corners of the province, knocking on everyone’s doors, saying “tax cut! Tax cut! TAX CUT!” And I waited, and I waited, and I waited…

The excuse, apparently, is that they didn’t want to be married to the tax in case it was defeated in the referendum. The NDP could have used the Liberals’ unfettered support to hammer them in the next election campaign. What the Liberals apparently didn’t realize is that they’ve been married to the tax since the 2009 election.

Now, we’re out $1.6 billion, because the province will have to re-pay the transitional funding back to the federal government. The calls for the feds to let us keep the cash are ridiculous. Quite plainly, a deal was struck: the feds gave the province the money, and province promised to implement the HST. No HST, no money. If you ask me to do something and pay me for it, and I don’t do it – should I really be entitled to keep your money?

This government and future governments will now have to look at a way to deal with the financial strain that will be created without the HST. Should we raise income taxes? Should we go into deficit? Should we tinker with a sales tax?…wait, we’ve already done that.

~Written by Chris Armstrong

Like everywhere else in the country, conversations in Ottawa quickly turn to the weather. This summer, it’s been hot. Since Wednesday, August 10, when I arrived, the mercury has stayed around 30 degrees Celsius, made hotter by the humidity. Ottawans tell me it’s been like this since May: patches of brown grass everywhere in the city provide evidence of the drought-like conditions. A 10-minute cloudburst on August 18 has been the only respite from the heat, raindrops as big as golf balls pelting the pavement.

I grew up a 40-minute drive south of Ottawa. I lived in the city during university; in 2001, I left for Alberta, and returned briefly the next year before absconding back West. Aside from a few short visits since then, I haven’t returned.

Things change, of course, but Ottawa remains the quiet and slow place that I remember. The same government buildings, seemingly on every corner. The same red-brick houses in the residential areas. The same holdups in traffic coming into the city from the suburbs. The same ugliness of Merivale Road, the same beauty along the Rideau Canal. Most of the bars & restaurants have survived on Elgin Street and, aside from the road construction in the Glebe, Bank Street has stayed pretty much the same over the last decade.

Sure, new things have been built or are in the process of being built. The Congress Centre, attached to the Rideau Centre, has grown a dark glass goiter that hovers over Colonel By Drive. A giant complex for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is apparently being constructed on the east side of town. A convention centre is now a metal skeleton near the airport, the parking lot taking up approximately a million acres of land.

And then there’s Lansdowne Park, on the southern fringes of downtown along the canal, the one-time home of the CFL team, whether they were called the Rough Riders or the Renegades. The Ottawa Senators played in the Civic Centre inside the building before they moved to the Palladium/Corel Centre/Scotiabank Place in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. Kanata). Cracks were found in Lansdowne’s stands in 2007, and city politicians started the process of redeveloping the site. But wait. A group calling itself the “Friends of Lansdowne” has taken City Hall to court over the impending development, arguing the City approved the plans without seeking competitive bids or adhering to the city’s bylaws. According to its website, the municipality also failed “to meet the standard of good faith decision making required of municipal officials.”

Heady stuff indeed. However, the Friends of Lansdowne don’t seem to have very many friends outside their own clique. Word on the street is that most of the Friends are residents of the Glebe, a well-off neighbourhood near the stadium whose inhabitants are generally regarded to be giant snobs. The Friends appeared in Ontario Superior Court to fight the redevelopment plans, but they were soundly defeated, and the City has gleefully publicized how much taxpayer money has been wasted in legal fees due to the challenge. The Friends have promised to appeal the ruling, which undoubtedly created more Enemies, and they probably didn’t help their own cause when one of their own criticized city councillors in the Ottawa Citizen thus: “Maybe they skipped their classes when they went to university, if they went to university.” You guessed it: he’s a professor at Carleton University.

Ottawa may be a national capital, but its problems have always been this provincial. Before I left a decade ago, I remember editorial pages in the Citizen filled with questions of “whither Ottawa?” Where are we going? How should we build a better city? What should our identity be? It felt like I took a ride in Doc Brown’s DeLorean when, a few days ago, I glanced on the front page the third installment of a five-part series entitled “Building a Better Ottawa.” A few pages later, columnist Andrew Cohen, a writer I read frequently when I lived here, disappointed me when prophesied the end of the book – an original thought if we were living in the year 1497.

I’m surprised anyone can think these heavy thoughts in this stifling heat. A new radio station, Dawg FM, has been my greatest discovery on this trip. Playing mostly blues with a smattering of soul and country-rock, the station provides the ideal soundtrack while driving around town. I didn’t hear a bad song on the station until today, when it played a track by The Eagles. Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

As the bluesy riffs dripped out of the car speakers, I wondered if perhaps these provincial concerns, and these deep thoughts about identity, are the reason why Ottawa, slow and quiet Ottawa, is the nation’s capital. Aren’t all Canadians equipped with an inferiority complex? Entire forests have been slaughtered to create newspapers and books that deride our lack of national identity and suggest ways to build one up, when, really, we should just be living our lives, working at our jobs and let the formation of our identity take care of itself. Do the Irish wonder what makes them Irish? The Italians? Estonians?

Such reveries melt away as the hot day turns into the warm evening, couples languidly walking down the street, a light breeze shuffling the leaves on the maples, Bill Withers playing on the radio.

~Written by Chris Armstrong