Prior to this week, the politics of the HST were all uphill for the McGuinty and Campbell Liberals and the Harper Tories.
After all, the issue was taxes, and no one likes taxes.
This was a particularly acute problem for the Ontario Liberals. The federal Tories and British Columbia Liberals are the parties furthest to the right still electorally viable in their marketplace. Voters typically trust left-centre parties on issues like social policy, health or education. They prefer centre-right ones on taxes and security. The more the McGuinty Liberals were talking about taxes, the more they were losing. It wasn’t that the issue wasn’t worth talking about; it was that it wasn’t the issue they should be highlighting.
That changed with the report Jack Mintz of the University of Alberta issued Wednesday.
First off, Mintz’s credentials are unassailable. He has been modeling the economic impact of budgets since 1980. He is no creature of the McGuinty government, having been scathingly critical in the past. His work at the C.D. Howe institute is seen as the acme of public intellectualism in Canada.
The man is the Cadillac of Canadian public policy and economics.
Mintz changed the game with a single fact… His eye-popping estimate of 591,000 new jobs created over the next ten years because of the HST and other tax reforms Ontario made in the 2009 budget.
Let’s put that number into context.
According to Statscan, there are about 7.2 million people in the Ontario labour force. However, only about 6.5 million are currently employed. That leaves around 700,000 people who are out of work.
Over the next ten years, Ontario’s tax reform will create almost enough jobs to employ every single one of those people.
The HST won’t eliminate unemployment. There will be new people entering the labour force, be they New Canadians, those who stopped looking or young people, who will increase the total pool of potential workers. But the HST will go a long way to undo the ravages of the current recession and stabilize the employment situation in Ontario.
In a stroke, Mintz has changed the debate from taxes to jobs.
Liberals cannot win a tax fight. The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party spent the last twenty years branding itself the “tax-fighters.” Those who vote on their dislike of tax long ago migrated to the base of the post-Davis-era, tax-cutting Tories.
Liberals can win a fight on jobs. In fact, the Mintz report shifts the burden to produce a jobs plan from McGuinty to Hudak.
Prior to this week, the opposition in Ontario was able to lean on its horn and toot that the government didn’t have a jobs plan.
Today, the McGuinty government can point to:
1) Business tax reform like the HST and lower corporate taxes,
2) Reaching Higher in post-secondary education,
3) Second Career retraining,
4) Massive stimulus investments in road, school and hospital infrastructure, and
5) Long-term investments in emerging technologies, biotech and green jobs.
That may not be everyone’s perfect plan, but it’s a plan. And one with at least 750,000 jobs attached.
What is more, the jobs issue is a more natural fit with Liberal grassroots values than taxes. Most Ontario Liberals are moderate types who joined or stayed with the party because they opposed Mike Harris’s cuts to public services. They aren’t class warriors like the NDP, but they do have squishy hearts for the underdog and especially the vulnerable.
A fight on jobs engages Liberals values like fairness, compassion and justice.
Jean Chretien’s most powerful moment in the 1993 debate, and probably the election, was when he talked about the “dignity of a job.” It was the best line from his best ad in the election.
