HST stings North hardest, NDP leader says

A harmonized sales tax in Ontario will make life harder for a region already struggling economically, the leader of Ontario’s New Democrats said in Thunder Bay Monday.

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath arrived in Thunder Bay on Sunday and will remain in the city until Tuesday. The local stop is part of Horwath’s Northern Ontario tour. The regional visit will include stops in Marathon and Terrace Bay before she heads back to her Hamilton-Centre riding in southern Ontario.

"Everyone knows that in Northern Ontario hydro bills and heating bills get really expensive in the colder months," Horwath said. "So while the HST is going to hit everybody, Northerners are going to feel the pain a little bit more than everyone else in the province."

The Ontario government has proposed to harmonize the five per cent GST and the eight per cent PST to create a single 13 per cent tax. That proposed tax shift would come into effect on July 1, 2010.

Supporters of HST say the new tax system will create savings for businesses small and large. Those supporters argue that the savings could flow to consumers through reduced costs of goods and services, and may even translate into more jobs for Ontario.
But Ontario’s NDP leader said she isn’t buying that.

"That’s not the way I see, and that’s not the way a lot of small business people I’ve been talking to in Thunder Bay see it either," she said. "In particular mom-and-pop type operations are saying that if we put eight per cent more on the price of everything, it’s going to decrease consumer demand."

Opposition parties are in agreement on this issue, and both are trying to rally the public into voicing their own opposition against the HST plans.

NDP members are collecting public opposition via a petition, which Horwath said holds more than 50,000 signatures.

"We’re basically trying to tell people to get involved and tell the government that this is the wrong thing to do," she said.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives have launched a similar campaign against the proposed HST.

Horwath plans to visit a few seniors on fixed incomes Tuesday. That meeting will have the NDP leader examine some of the seniors’ bills. Horwatch will try to calculate what she believes those bills would look like under an HST system. Click here to submit a letter to the editor.