| Via Norman Spector's blog, who supplies an excellent daily summary of the news, I find this article by William Watson who answers the accusations thrown by Paul Martin against Mike Harris. Since the article is reserved to subscribers on the National Post's site and that Norman Spector does not have permalinks in his blog, I'm reproducing the article here: | Via le blog de Norman Spector, qui fournit un excellent résumé quotidien des nouvelles, je trouve cet article de William Watson qui répond aux accusations lancées par Paul Martin contre Mike Harris. Étant donné que l'article est réservé aux abonnés sur le site du National Post et que Norman Spector n'a pas de permaliens sur son blog, je reproduis l'article ici: |
It seems the federal election campaign has already started. Asked about the Ontario Liberals' for-him-embarrassing high-tax, high-spending, high-deficit budget, Prime Minister Paul Martin put the blame exactly where you'd expect. On Stephen Harper. Well, not exactly on Stephen Harper, but on his ideological soul-mate, Mike Harris, former premier of Ontario ."I think that this really demonstrates," Mr. Martin told reporters, "that when Mike Harris cut taxes prematurely, eventually those chickens come home to roost." Mr. Harris retired from politics in 2002. How Mr. Harper comes into it is as follows: "Stephen Harper is essentially saying, 'Cut taxes now and face the consequences later.' That's what Mike Harris said, and you see what happens." Wanting to see exactly what had happened, I turned to the accounts provided by Mr. Martin's own Department of Finance in its annual Fiscal Reference Tables, which you can find at www.fin.gc.ca/toce/2003/frt_e.html if you care to read along.
The decline in Ontario 's tax revenues must have been pretty drastic to require such serious medicine as Mr. McGuinty is serving up. So it's a little surprising that if you look at what happened between 1995, when Mike Harris took office, and the fiscal year 2002-03, the last for which data are complete, you see that "own-source" revenues in Ontario were 36% higher at the end of the eight years than they were at the beginning. That's measuring taxes in current dollars, without adjusting for inflation, so the real increase would be smaller. But it's still an increase, despite Mr. Harris' cuts.
Funny thing, when you calculate the same number for the federal government, you find that tax revenues were only 35% higher at the end of the eight years than at the beginning. That's right. Revenues grew more quickly in Mr. Harris' tax-slashing Ontario than they did in Mr. Martin's hard-taxing Canada . We can call it Mr. Martin's Canada , surely, since he was the country's finance minister all through this period.
OK, so maybe Mr. Harris' tax cuts weren't as dramatic as you might think. But there's that word "prematurely" that Mr. Martin used. ("When Mike Harris cut taxes prematurely ...") Mr. Martin doesn't actually think tax cuts are bad. They just have to be timed right. He gave us, as he likes to say, "the biggest tax cut in Canadian history" in 2000, but that was fiscally responsible because by then the federal government had eliminated its deficit and could afford tax cuts. By contrast, Mr. Harris started in on his tax cuts as soon as he took office even though he still had a big deficit. So while the fiscally responsible Mr. Martin was able to eliminate his deficit in just four years (1993 to 1997) the more profligate Mr. Harris took a full, a full ...
Well, actually, the tables show that Mr. Harris also took four years to eliminate his deficit (1995 to 1999). Should he have taken that long? Surely not. Ontario 's debt in 1995 was $9,303 per Ontarian. Cutting taxes with a debt that big is unconscionable. Or so it seems until you look at the debt Mr. Martin had when he made his big tax cuts in 2000: $17,093. Why that's almost double the debt Mr. Harris was burdened with. What would that be? "Really, really unconscionable"?
On the other hand, as everyone knows, Mr. Martin did a great job cutting the debt he inherited. In 2002, the federal debt was just 86% of what it had been in 1995, a much, much better job than Mr. Harris, who only managed to get his debt down to ... well, 87% of where it had been in 1995.
On the other hand, because his tax revenues were not nearly as buoyant as they would have been without the tax cuts Mr. Harris was forced to make, as Mr. Martin put it the other day, "Draconian cuts" in spending. (Remember Draco, the Harper-like Athenian lawmaker?) Public spending in Ontario , you see, grew by only 15% between 1995 and 2003. Compare that to Ottawa 's much, much more generous ... er, 19% and you can see what a disastrous difference Mr. Harris made.
To be sure, some of Mr. Harris' and Mr. Harper's friends would say that if public expenditures in Ontario did grow slowly when Mr. Harris was premier that was because Mr. Martin made his own Draconian cuts in cash transfers to the provinces, Ontario included. So it's a little surprising to learn that in fact federal cash transfers were 23% in 2002 than in 1995.
Except that that's a bit of a statistical illusion. Federal transfers to Ontario were $7.8-billion in 1995. But they didn't reach that level again until 2002, when they were in fact 23% higher. Every year before that they were less than they had been in 1995. If you add up the shortfall over those seven years, even including 2002, it comes to $10.3-billion.
Comparing that $10.3-billion to the $18.2-billion Mr. Harris added to Ontario 's debt during those years, might you not conclude that more than half Mr. Harris' chickens came from Mr. Martin's own roost?
| This reminds me of something else I read in a book written by the same author: Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life. He explained that on 60 North American jurisdictions (50 states and 10 provinces), Ontario was in 1995 the 11th most generous with respect to welfare (as surprising as it might seem, the 10 most generous jurisdictions were all American states.) He notes in an endnote that the effect of the "savage and heartless" welfare cuts of the Harris government was to make Ontario fall, by the parution date of the book (1998), from the 11th to the 12th place out of 60. | Ça me rappelle quelque chose que j'ai lu dans un livre écrit par le même auteur: Globalization and the Meaning of Canadian Life. Il y explique que sur 60 juridictions nord-américaines (50 états et 10 provinces), l'Ontario était en 1995 la 11e plus généreuse quant à l'assistance sociale (aussi surprenant que ça puisse paraître, les 10 juridictions les plus généreuses étaient tous des états américains.) Il ajoute dans une note de fin que l'effet des coupes "sauvages et sans coeur" du gouvernement Harris dans l'aide sociale a été de faire descendre l'Ontario, en date de parution du livre (1998), de la 11e à 12e place sur 60. |