Premier Dalton McGuinty dares Tories to scrap HST

Premier Dalton McGuinty is pressuring Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak to promise he’d scrap the controversial 13 per cent HST.
The challenge came after Hudak launched repeated attacks on the premier Tuesday, fuelled by McGuinty’s own admission last week that “for families at the outset, there will be an increase in taxation.”
“The premier finally admitted that his HST was going to be a tax grab on the backs of Ontario families,” Hudak said in the Legislature’s daily question period. “Before his moment of cleansing honesty, the premier was far from forthright.”
The tax means Ontarians will pay a total of $1.8 billion more a year in taxes on electricity, natural gas, home heating oil and gasoline alone, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath added, citing party calculations based on Statistics Canada figures.
McGuinty countered that the Conservatives should promise to cancel the tax, which takes effect July 1 and is supported by the federal Conservative government.
“With so much vigour, vitality, enthusiasm and bravado, you would think that the party opposite would be firmly committed to rescinding this provision should they form the government,” McGuinty said Tuesday under repeated attacks from Hudak.
“But they are not going to.”
Hudak later said McGuinty handcuffed any future government by making it expensive to scrap the HST, forcing the province to repay $4.3 billion to the feds if it were to be rescinded before July 1, 2015.
“I think the premier full well knows that he signed a bad deal that contains a poison pill,” Hudak told reporters.
He was vague on what a Conservative government might do in 2015, which, with the next provincial election due in October 2011, would be towards the end of the next term.
“We’re going to be campaigning on lowering the tax burden for Ontario families,” Hudak said, citing the burden of the HST along with the health tax of up to $900 per person the Liberals imposed in their 2004 budget, just months after campaigning on a promise not to increase taxes.
McGuinty said the HST, which blends the 8 per cent provincial sales tax and 5 per cent GST, will be offset by income tax breaks already in place as well as sales and property tax credits.
http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/hst/article/808061--premier-dalton-mcguinty-dares-tories-to-scrap-hst
The title of this article is " Premier Dalton McGuinty dares Tories to scrap HST" written by Rob Ferguson and published on May 12, 2010 by TheStar. This article explains Preimer Dalton McGunity is pressuring the progressive conserative leader Tim Hudak to elimante the 13 percent HST. Dalton McGunity is pressuring Tim Hudak by quoting “With so much vigour, vitality, enthusiasm and bravado, you would think that the party opposite would be firmly committed to rescinding this provision should they form the government,” McGuinty said Tuesday under repeated attacks from Hudak ( Ferguson 1). If Preimer Dalton McGunity manage to convince conservative leader Tim Hudak in eliminating the HST people in Ontario would not have to pay an additional 1.8billion a year.