Liberal student masters the Conservative targeted tax break

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Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery. If so, then Justin Trudeau is an admirer of the retail politics of minutely targeted tax deductions, for which the Harper government has shown a great fondness. The student, you might say, has become the master.

The Teacher and Early Childhood Educator School Supply Tax Benefit, which was dropped into the federal Liberal platform on Tuesday, is a particularly odd variant. Yes, the federal government has a role to play in education. Yes, education matters. Yes, teachers are important.

But should there be a special tax break for teachers? The Conservative Party earlier this week micro-targeted their base by promising to give people a tax break for being a member of a service club, such as the Royal Canadian Legion or the Kiwanis. Mr. Trudeau is now promising something similar for teachers, or at least teachers who spend money on their students. Both measures involve real dollars and cents, but are more about signalling intent and affiliation to core and potential voters. And rewarding them with money.

The Conservative Party response to Mr. Trudeau's policy is that it is redundant – because teachers and all other employees are already able to claim a tax deduction for some employment-related expenses, known as the employment benefit, introduced by the Conservatives.

Politics aside, the Liberal measure assumes that schools need to be subsidized by the teachers they employ. It also expresses an expectation that low-paid daycare workers will (and even should) subsidize their employers, who are often running for-profit businesses.

If the teacher tax break were not on the authorized Liberal Party website, we might suspect that it was a Conservative satire on the youthful Mr. Trudeau, or a Liberal satire on the more demagogic aspects of the federal Conservatives. No, alas, it is all quite seriously proposed.