In December 2005 Conservative MP Garth Turner supported a GST cut calling the Liberals liars for saying an income tax cut would be kinder to low income earners. But this month Liberal MP Garth Turner (same guy) called the decision to cut the GST a “dumb decision”.

Dumb decision? If the voters of Halton, Ontario put this hypocritical, two-faced coward back in Parliament it will be a dumb decision.

More? Read “Then And Now: GST Cut Good, GST Cut Bad” by the Globe’s Dan Cook.

In the 1980s Brian Mulroney presided over enormous increases in government spending and taxation. The national debt ballooned as each year’s deficit was piled onto the one before it. Only when the Liberals came to power did this change.

But the Liberals deserved absolutely no credit. It simply wasn’t possible to spend any more or raise taxes any higher - the Mulroney Tories had maxed out both these options. The Liberals did what they do best. They jettisoned their usual tax and spend predisposition to steal the thunder from their only effective political opponents - the Reform Party.

The fiscal mismanagement of the Mulroney Conservatives created the need for the Reform Party whose credible threat to the Liberals then forced them to make what progress they did in cleaning up the mess.

Now, after years of balanced budgets and even some very modest tax cuts, Canadians still find themselves the most overtaxed people in the developed world. Why? Because we have another gutless Conservative government.

Now this pejorative is intended as a double-entendre denoting cowardice while also alluding to the practice that could create the fiscal freedom to indulge in tax reductions - broadly and deeply. That is, by “gutting” the many and varied wasteful government programs that simply rob the tax payer to pander to special interest groups.

The recent auditor general’s report details overspending on the fisheries, the gun registry, computer equipment and infrastructure grants and many other items. Here’s one particularly egregious example. Almost half a billion dollars was spend last year on foster homes for 8,000 Native children on reserves. That’s $56,000 per child with no accounting for how the money was used or whether the children were any better of as a result. Sounds to me like an excuse to funnel more money and/or power to Native elites. Who else determines where this money goes?

How about the 41,000 illegal immigrants who have been already ordered deported from the country but whose whereabout are unknown? Why are we spending money on a system to screen immigrants when those who fail to meet the test stay here anyway? Why not save ourselves the money and scrap the whole thing?

Because gutting wasteful programs creates political enemies and doing that takes guts. From its actions to date it looks like we have just one more gutless Conservative government.

In a recent editorial the Toronto Sun is advocating the virtues of a flat tax system. I’m all for it for all the reasons they cite. But I believe income calculation should be by household thereby allowing for income splitting. Check it out.

Real conservatism has arrived.That was the point of the decade-long Reform/PC schism culminating in the Alliance and the alliance between the Alliance and the PCs - the Conservative Party of Canada. All of it was to take the “progressive” (read: leftist) tendencies out of Canada’s conservative party. So the ballots have been counted and the results are in and now finally Canada has a truly conservative government.

Ok, prove it.

Canadians are still among the highest taxed people in all the industrial nations. Despite the government’s minority status its opposition is so timid it’s disgusting. The CPC has and can continue to govern like it has a majority. If it falls it will be re-elected, possibly even with a majority, but if with a minority, so what?

What should the government do with this power? A real conservative government of an overtaxed people would think of doing nothing before dramatically reducing taxes. The means of doing so is suggested in this article.

“All taxation is a loss per se. It is the sacred duty of the government to take only from the people what is necessary to the proper discharge of the public service; and that taxation in any other mode, is simply in one shape or another, legalized robbery.”

Who was the raving lunatic libertarian to speak such nonsense? How about Robert Cartwright, Canada’s first Liberal minister of finance. (Back then Liberals were true liberals.)

If it is wrong for me to take money from my neighbour without his consent no matter how good my intentions are for using that money, how can I authorize politicians to do so simply by making an “X” in a box on election day? I can’t delegate an authority I don’t have. And no matter how many people join my gang, and no matter what my gang calls itself, if it takes my neighbour’s money without his consent, it’s theft pure and simple. Calling the gang “the government” doesn’t change a thing - taxation is theft - legalized robbery.