Harper, Martin spar on taxes

CAMPBELL CLARK AND HEATHER SCOFFIELD

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

May 25, 2004 at 1:14 AM EDT

Saint John and Ottawa — Paul Martin refused yesterday to rule out future tax increases if he wins the June 28 election, even as he continued to blast Conservative Leader Stephen Harper for proposing deep tax cuts.

The Conservatives attacked the Liberal Leader where they feel he is most vulnerable, on the sponsorship scandal.

Although Mr. Martin insisted he is not proposing tax increases, he repeatedly avoided delivering an all-out pledge like Dalton McGuinty's, a pledge that the Liberal Ontario Premier broke last week, creating a backlash for the federal Liberals.

"Take a look at my record," Mr. Martin told reporters in Stratford, PEI. "And my record is that taxes came down when I was finance minister."

After several questions on the issue, Mr. Martin finally offered a more direct assertion in French, saying he is not the kind of person who would raise taxes.

"I think I have the right and the responsibility to say, 'Here's what I am; I am not someone who will increase taxes. I am someone who will invest in health care.' "

Conservatives say the Liberals' refusal to promise no new taxes leaves Canadians vulnerable to tax increases by stealth.

In a speech in Cornwall, Ont., Mr. Harper said the Liberals' tax talk has become "bizarre and silly."

"I think the Liberals are going to run on the slogan, 'Tax me; I'm Canadian. Waste my money; I'm Canadian,'." he said.

Mr. Martin's advisers insisted there is no health-care premium in the Liberal health-care platform to be released today, nor any proposal to raise taxes in the entire Liberal policy book. Health care has to be financed with more federal cash and "fundamental reform," Mr. Martin said.

In speeches in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick ridings, Mr. Martin warned that Mr. Harper's tax-cut proposal would lead to slashing social programs and health care, and a U.S.-style society.

"We are different from the United States. We want to be different than the United States. We are Canadians," he told about 600 Liberals in Saint John.

The Conservatives would implement tax cuts of about $16-billion over four years. Mr. Harper said the Liberals are running a campaign of fear, but that Canadians won't buy it.

The New Democrats, meanwhile, campaigned on rolling back $1.1-billion in corporate taxes in order to pay for more social programs.

The party would cut the goods and services tax on family essentials.

"That as a minimum would have to be changed," Leader Jack Layton said in Vancouver. "It's too expensive when you're leaving deficits on the shoulders of students, women and cities, communities and the environment."

The NDP is planning to remove hundreds of millions of dollars in support for polluting fuels, and transfer the money to green energy industries, party officials said. The party is also expected to revive a vow not to tax low-income earners.

Mr. Layton outlined the NDP platform themes yesterday, promising a more environmentally friendly economy, a crackdown on private health care, a permanent national infrastructure program to create jobs and distribute clean drinking water, a cut in student debt and measures to make postsecondary schooling more affordable.

Mr. Martin's stump speech, which moves from the Liberal fiscal record to calls for preserving social programs to a series of attacks on the opposition, focuses most of its force at Mr. Harper. But it includes sharp words thrown at the Bloc Quιbιcois and its leader, Gilles Duceppe, whom Mr. Martin accused of hiding his sovereigntist agenda.

For his part, Mr. Duceppe said the Liberals deliberately opted for a late June vote, knowing that it would eat into the Bloc's traditional support base of young voters.

"Liberal strategists, under the cover of anonymity, have admitted that they selected this date to hurt the Bloc," Mr. Duceppe said after a rally in Montreal, where he presented the 17 Bloc candidates under the age of 35.

At every event, Mr. Martin has been trailed by handfuls of protesters, often attacking the Liberals over the sponsorship scandal. The Conservatives helped the protesters' cause yesterday, saying that re-electing Mr. Martin would ensure that the judicial inquiry into the scandal would be shut down.

Mr. Harper said the inquiry appointed by Mr. Martin has not started its work, despite having had a lot of time to do so. He shied away, however, from suggesting that the judge running the inquiry was dragging his feet.

Mr. Harper took aim at the Liberal Leader during a speech in Mr. Martin's hometown of Montreal last night, saying he was part of the sponsorship scandal. "Paul Martin wants us to forget that for 10 years he was the finance minister. In fact, he was the one writing the cheques."

Mr. Martin said yesterday that enough information is available for him to keep his pledge that there will be no election before Canadians can judge what happened. He said charges laid against one former civil servant and an ad executive, and the information that has come out through the public accounts committee, are enough for now.

With reports from Brian Laghi, Steven Chase and Daniel Leblanc

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