NDP Leader Jack Layton took direct aim at Paul Martin yesterday, accusing him of being responsible for the deaths of Toronto homeless people by cutting affordable-housing programs when the Liberal Leader was finance minister.
Instead of maintaining those programs he "chose to give that money in tax cuts to his corporate friends, and I will not forgive him for that," Mr. Layton said after the nomination meeting of his wife Olivia Chow.
"I believe that when Paul cancelled affordable housing across this country it produced a dramatic rise in homelessness and death due to homelessness," he said, using the backdrop of a memorial to homeless people in the city in the downtown riding of Trinity-Spadina.
"I've always said I hold him responsible for that."
Steve MacKinnon, deputy director of the federal Liberals and a Martin campaign spokesman, rejected the accusations levelled at the Liberal Leader.
"Mr. Layton owes an apology to those people who do live in poverty," Mr. MacKinnon said. "It cheapens both him and the debate, and Mr. Layton's credibility has taken another self-inflicted blow."
Mr. Layton also made his strongest pitch yet to left-leaning Canadians yesterday, pledging to fund a massive new health and social spending program by extracting $45-billion in new taxes over five years from business, the wealthy and estate inheritances.
Mr. Layton told reporters that the platform demonstrates how different the NDP is from the Liberals and Conservatives.
"We are working to restore some fairness," Mr. Layton told reporters. "They focus on tax cuts -- we focus on services for people."
The unprecedented package of tax hikes, unveiled in the party's election platform, would help an NDP government pump $27-billion more into health care over the next half decade -- far more than other parties promise.
The New Democrats are betting that their unapologetically left-wing platform will lure back traditional NDP voters who quit the fold for the Liberal Party when it was led by Jean Chrétien.
The NDP's platform is a five-year $61-billion program. It expects to phase in tax hikes and collect $11.8-billion annually within five years through measures such as:
Slapping an inheritance tax on estates worth more than $1-million (but exempting small businesses and family farms);
Raising the corporate tax rate to 24 per cent from 21 per cent, ending entertainment and meal expense deductions for businesses and making capital gains fully taxable;
Imposing a new profit tax on banks that affects rates of return exceeding 10 per cent;
Raising the tax rate for those earning more than $250,000 to 32 per cent from 29 per cent;
Cancelling treaties with countries that offer foreign tax havens allowing Canadian firms to avoid paying taxes at home.
The proposed NDP tax hikes amount to a wealth transfer, a party official said, because they also make room for $35-billion in tax breaks and benefit increases for ordinary Canadians being promised by Mr. Layton.
The NDP would boost the child tax benefit payout to a maximum of $4,900 from $1,169 per child, abolish taxes for those earning less than $15,000, cut the goods and services tax from family essentials and scrap security charges on flights.
New Democrat officials said that only 6 per cent of Canadian taxpayers would be directly affected by the capital gains and personal income tax hikes, but acknowledged they didn't know how many would feel the effects of an inheritance tax.
Steven Chase