NDP would remove HST from heating oil and natural gas with election win

TORONTO – The campaign for the Oct. 6 Ontario election is quickly turning into a battle over taxes, with the opposition parties claiming the HST is just one Liberal policy making life more unaffordable for voters.

The New Democrats promised Thursday to remove the harmonized sales tax from home heating oil, natural gas and hydro bills in if they win the election.

The NDP would scrap $850 million a year in planned corporate tax cuts of $1.4 billion this year and $1.8 billion next year to offset the lost HST revenue, said Leader Andrea Horwath.

"The HST is simply a shifting of tax burden off the corporate sector onto the backs of individuals," she said.

"We would claw back the corporate tax cuts the government has implemented and cancel the future ones."

More than 100,000 people have signed the NDP’s online petition, started in September, to remove the HST from hydro bills. Taking the harmonized sales tax off of home heating fuels may be just the first phase of more HST changes to come, hinted Horwath.

"As we move over the next couple of months, you’ll get a more clear picture of exactly what we’re going to do with the whole HST piece," she said. "We’re not at that position yet to release our platform."

However, Horwath wouldn’t say if the NDP would eventually promise to remove the HST from gasoline, lower the rate of the tax or even scrap it completely, a move that would cost the province $4.5 billion to cancel its tax agreement with the federal government.

"Is it possible tomorrow? (It would) cost a lot of money," said Horwath.

"Is it possible three years from now? Maybe it’ll cost a little bit less then. So there are things that we need to look at in terms of us costing that scenario out."

The Progressive Conservatives, meanwhile, said "everything is on the table" when it comes to providing tax relief for Ontario voters, but like the NDP, won’t be pushed into releasing their campaign platform before they’re ready.

"Our platform will be released when we’re ready to release it … not when Dalton McGuinty tells us to," said Opposition critic Peter Shurman.

The Tories wouldn’t even denounce Horwath’s plan to cancel planned corporate tax cuts – usually a key policy of any Conservative party – and wouldn’t be specific about cutting or eliminating the HST.

"We’re looking at everything, so there’s nothing more that I have to say about that than what I have to say about the specifics of what Ms. Horwath is putting across," said Shurman.

"When it comes to what we’re going to do in putting a platform forward to the voters of Ontario, we’ll do that in due course and I’m not prepared to say at this point that it will or won’t include either side of the equation that Ms. Horwath put forward."

The Liberals defend the HST as a necessary measure to make Ontario businesses more competitive, which in turn is supposed to make the province more attractive to investors and help create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.