Ontario Green Party Leading the Way
To Save Health Care And Education, Cut Income Taxes: De Jong
| Here is a September 26, 2002 news announcement from the Green Party of Ontario, Canada. |
Frank de Jong, Leader of the Green Party of Ontario, said that Ontario's education and health care budgets could be brought under control by cutting income taxes.
“The Green Party believes that people should be able to keep the money they earn,” said de Jong. “We have a plan that would shift taxes from personal incomes to sources like natural resources and pollution. This would allow us to hire more teachers to staff our cash-strapped schools and more doctors for our overburdened hospitals with the same budgets.”Health care and education are service-based activities where over 70 per cent of budgets go to the salaries of doctors, teachers, nurses and other personnel. Governments then tax almost 50 per cent of those salaries back through one form of taxation or another.
The Green Party believes this is inefficient and discourages employment. Taxing incomes makes people more expensive to employ, which is a disincentive to employers. To increase employment, people should be taxed less. This Green Party policy applies to all jobs, not just to jobs in health and education.
Instead of taxing income, governments should apply levies to wealth streams that come free from nature. Some of the wealth that individuals or businesses receive from using natural resources and land should accrue to government. As well, the Green Party supports the idea of full-cost pricing for all consumer goods, rather than excessively taxing citizens at the municipal level when people dispose of artificially cheap consumer goods in landfills.
The Green Party’s comprehensive plan would encourage industry to shift to green production. Businesses will respond to levies on natural resources and land by using them more sparingly and by employing more people, who would then be less expensive to employ. With more of their hard-earned dollars in their pockets, greater employment and a more responsible use of land and natural resources, Ontario’s citizens would see a rapid increase in their quality of life.
"Tax-shifting is the ticket to reducing class sizes and providing improved health care — while cutting taxes for the hard-working men and women of Ontario," said de Jong. “It’s a key part of our party’s plan to build a Better Way to Live for all Ontarians.”
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