UPDATE: here are photos from the demonstration
When: Saturday, 17th of July, 2010, 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm
Where: Premier Dalton McGinty’s Ottawa office at 1795 Infanticide Kilborn Ave.
1st of July, 2010, Ontario ‘harmonized’ the collection of its sales tax with the federal Goods and Services tax. That, in itself, is not a problem. (Please consider this to be a pragmatic statement assessing the current situation, not the underlying principles – I’ll rant on that separately.)
Again, this was a question of ‘how’, not ‘what’…
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty turned it into a major tax grab by applying the combined tax onto a whole slew of items not previously taxed by the Province’s sales tax. People did not like it – but, realizing there was not much they could do to stop it (most people I know think McGuinty is so corrupt, if they even spoke up they might be putting themselves into danger).
So, everybody braced him or her self for the upwards jump in taxes.
And did the prices ever jump up!!!
Except that…
Without actually telling anyone anything about it, the Ontario government ‘snuck in’ a whole new way to steal money from us!!!
It was so secretive about this that it failed to mention anything to the citizens. It also did not let any info leak out to the opposition parties – it did not even tell some of the elected MPPs on the government side!
How?
There is an ‘agency’ called Stewardship Ontario – not to be confused with the Ontario Government’s Ontario Stewardship, that’s a popular and completely unrelated thing – that ‘imposed eco-fees’ on toxic products to make sure that if they got into the garbage system, they’d be take care of ‘properly’.
I suspect this ‘waste diversion’ program is based on the idea that if they tax us into poverty, we’ll buy less stuff and so there will not be as much garbage…
As of 1st of July, prices went up because somewhere between 9 an 10 thousand items now have this ‘eco-fee’ stuck on!
A man buying needles for his diabetic wife used to pay $60 for a certain amount. After the ‘eco-fee’ was applied, he had to pay $190…
People from various areas of the province have reported that a $4 bag of cement now has $3.90 eco-fee…
All medications now have an eco-fee.
And other ‘toxic’ substances we need to protect ourselves from by tacking this eco-fee in it – I kid you not – a paper bag of grass seed!
Stewardship Ontario even urges retailers to hide the eco-fee in the price of the product instead of showing it on the bill!
Do these people think we are total idiots? Or are they relying on our fear to keep us cowed?
To add insult to injury: Bob Chiarelli, our past mayor (and, in my never-humble-opinion, one of the most dangerous men in the Ottawa area) has told us this is the fault of (!) Mike Harris. He also claims NONE of this money goes to the government….except that it does – municipal governments are already complaining that they are being short-changed in their kick-backs on this.
And the official line from the Ontario government?
The manufacturers and retilers do not HAVE TO charge their consumers – they CAN just absorb the cost themselves…
There is more that needs to be said, but I’d better wrap this up because I’m just getting too mad.
Let me just urge you: if you are going to be in Ottawa, and you don’t like this illegal tax, and you can – go to the protest.
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