There’s a sharp message for Premier Rachel Notley in Tuesday’s defeat of the Manitoba NDP. Tell the whole truth about taxes.

Three years ago Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger raised the provincial portion of the sales tax by one point, to eight per cent from seven.

He had promised during the 2011 election campaign not to do that. Selinger paid for his transgression ever afterward. On Tuesday, his whole government paid.

Notley, of course, is creating a massive carbon tax that was not specifically mentioned during her election campaign.

It’s obviously worse to do something you promised not to do, than it is to do something you just sort of neglected to mention.

But the political impact is much the same. Notley’s credibility is weakened. When the premier vows not to bring in a sales tax in this term — that is, before 2019 — Albertans are entitled to say, oh, is that so?

Notley responds to every tax criticism by saying the province still has Canada’s lowest tax regime by far.

When New Democrats make this point, though, they aren’t necessarily praising low taxation. They’re seeing visions of more fields to harvest.

The premier said Tuesday that even though she won’t bring in a sales tax in this term, it would be dishonest to deny it could be a possibility someday. She alluded to, oh, a decade down the road.

But with a $10.4-billion deficit, and $57 billion in debt on the way, the need for new revenue isn’t 10 years away. It’s right now.

Finance Minister Joe Ceci has often said the government is looking at all revenue sources. And the New Democrats continuously show there are few levers they won’t tinker with to raise more cash.

In the case of the education property tax, which will cost typical Calgary homeowners an extra $170 a year, doing nothing was actually a kind of passive tinkering.

With property values falling, Calgarians are going to be taxed on property assessments done before the economic downturn registered in the tax offices.

The Progressive Conservatives were always very cautious about this weird education property tax.

In a bad economy they might well have lowered the rate a tick to make allowances. Then they would have blasted mayors who tried to move into the empty tax space.

But the NDP simply left the rate alone. That has the effect of raising taxes in Calgary. And now Notley blames the PCs for setting the rate.

When Notley announced a new interchange for Red Deer Tuesday, Mayor Tara Veer mentioned civic revenue challenges, including the loss of grants in lieu of taxes.

That’s an arcane mechanism by which the province supplied grants to replace taxes municipalities aren’t allowed to charge on provincially owned facilities.

The grants recognized that such facilities (seniors lodges, for instance) cost local government a lot of money to service.

The Prentice PCs eliminated those grants. The NDP was expected to restore them, but didn’t. This means more upward pressure on local taxes.

The New Democrats know that a sales tax would make such irritants unnecessary. And they, unlike the PCs, harbour no visceral distaste of the very idea.

If Notley is sorely tempted someday, she might also recall the case of B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, who promised in the 2009 provincial election campaign not to harmonize sales taxes.

Afterward, he did just that. Then it came out that officials had been planning the move during the campaign.

Campbell’s approval rating fell to nine per cent. The next year, he quit.

Complete honesty in these matters won’t always prevent defeat, but perceived dishonesty virtually guarantees it.

That fact has now cost Notley the only NDP ally she had in the national premiers’ club. It’s a message she might take to heart.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald.

 

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