EDITORIAL PAGE Making the cost clear

Tax revolt? Not quite. But the discontent of Canadian taxpayers is becoming increasingly evident. Truckers laid siege to the nation’s biggest city recently, blocking the main arteries into and out of Toronto in the country’s industrial heartland. The result was chaos and a surprisingly solid show of support for the truckers by commuters stuck in traffic for hours at a time.

The same week, Bay Street’s captains of capitalism, sufficiently incensed at the province’s plans for huge budget deficits, marched on Ontario’s legislature and denounced the future tax increases that will inevitably result. Premier Bob Rae dismissed the businessmen’s rally as simply a demonstration against the New Democratic Party while his treasurer sloughed off the truckers’ concerns by citing Ottawa as his model for fiscal management and promising a task force to look into the matter.

Meanwhile, consumers from White Rock, B.C., to St. Stephen, N.B., continue streaming across the border in search of bargains. They are fed up with Canadian prices jacked up by taxes, taxes, taxes.

Canadians, it seems, are finally realizing just how much we have been taken advantage of by governments that cannot balance the nation’s bank book. Ironically, thanks should go to the very government initiatives that have been castigated the most — the Free Trade Agreement and the goods and services tax. Why? Because those two changes are making it clear just what we have all been paying to irresponsible governments.

The 7% GST is much hated by the public, but consider that manufacturers previously paid 15% in the Manufacturers Sales Tax and passed it on to the consumer. How could Canadian manufacturers compete with foreign suppliers? Simple. Put up trade barriers to keep the competition out. That way, the government could tax the domestic industries to their hearts’ delight.

If the GST has brought to light some of the hidden taxes we’ve been paying — and made service industries share the burden of governments’ excess with manufacturers — the Free Trade Agreement has made it clear that trade barriers were not erected to protect domestic industry at all. The FTA has shown that it is higher taxes that make us uncompetitive, taxes we use to pay for state-of-the-art frigates, for an unelected Senate, for medicare, social assistance programs and a whole host of others. Some of those institutions and schemes we want to protect as the Canadian way of life, but many are simply too expensive.

Truckers’ blockades and cross-border shopping are making it clear that governments cannot continue indefinitely taking more from taxpayers to pay for their grandiose programs. Canadians are not going to sell their patriotism simply to get a better bargain on bed sheets across the border, but neither should they be expected to pay the bills for a better way of life without knowing what the true cost is. Once aware of the cost, the people will decide what is worth preserving and what is simply unwanted political baggage.