Because governments know they can get away with cowardly cash grabs
dressed up for health care, even if they bear no resemblance to
health care's true costs and may not even be used to help pay for
it. Better to shake down taxpayers in the name of the one program
sacrosanct to them, than to outright raise regular taxes or do the
dirty work of cutting spending.
Ontarians should know this better than most -- they were hit with a
massive tax increase, the largest in their history, when the
Liberals brought in a personal health tax of up to $900 in 2004 when
they were trying to climb out of a budget hole inherited from the
previous Tory government.
Dalton McGuinty, premier at the time, had only months earlier vowed
during an election not to increase taxes. A decade on, with McGuinty
long gone, Liberal-ruled Ontario is still in hock up to its
eyeballs, with no prospect of whipping its books into shape until at
least two years from now.
Now, with the collapse in oil prices that have greased its
treasury, Alberta is hitting up taxpayers with a special health tax
of up to $1,000 on those with taxable incomes above $50,000 a year.
Ironically, just four years after Ontario imposed its health tax,
then-buoyant Alberta -- oil was trading at $118 a barrel, more than
double today's price -- waved a magic wand and made health insurance
charges go away.
Neither province calls its health charge a tax, of course. That
would be too honest.