Tory targets poverty before upscale crowd

from Canada Com

Mary Vallis, CanWest News Service

TORONTO — Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory, battling comparisons with former premier Mike Harris, argued Thursday his party’s business policies will benefit Ontario’s poor, saying a strong economy and benefits for those in need "go hand in hand."

“I want to build an Ontario where no poverty is permanent, where our shared values and common stability mean that there are no strangers,” Tory said. “As a Progressive Conservative, I believe that economic growth and social progress go hand in hand, and that you cannot have one without the other.”

Tory told the joint meeting of the Canadian Club and Empire Club of Canada that if elected, he will reduce the overall tax burden by phasing out the health tax imposed by Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals, beginning in January, with people earning less than $30,000 a year. Other income groups would follow over four years.

“The tax was created in a way that punished lower-income people and made them pay a higher rate of tax than other income brackets, and that is something that will be corrected first, because it was wrong to begin with,” Tory said.

Tory said the move would affect one million people, saving them each about $300 a year.

Howard Hampton, leader of the Ontario NDP, quickly accused the Conservatives of jumping on the NDP bandwagon with their health-tax announcement.

“I think that the Conservatives are trying to follow us, and I think the truth is undeniable,” Hampton said. “This is one of the most regressive and unfair taxes ever visited on low and middle income families.”

In his own remarks Thursday, McGuinty characterized his choice to raise taxes as “a difficult decision.”

The health tax is at the heart of opposition parties’ attacks on McGuinty’s Liberals as the premier had pledged not to raise taxes before the last provincial election in 2003.

During his speech, Tory also pledged to streamline the provincial budget by two per cent, as well as to reduce the number of government regulations by 25 per cent.

If elected, the Progressive Conservatives also plan to invest $400-million a year in health care; to defer medical students’ debt; and to provide incentives to keep older doctors from retiring.

Tory said he will personally travel to the United States to persuade the 9,000 Canadian-trained doctors practicing there to move back to Ontario.

In London earlier Thursday, McGuinty’s said Ontario voters should accept his party “warts and all.”

But when asked about breaking a promise made during the last election about not raising taxes — before bringing in a health “premium” that costs the average Ontarian $750 a year — he blamed the move on a hidden deficit left by the former Conservative government.

The Liberals on Thursday disputed that figure, placing it instead at $470.

At the same time, McGuinty challenged Tory to detail his plan to cut $1.5 billion in government “efficiencies.”

“You want to play in the big league?” McGuinty asked Tory through the media. “Tell us where you’re going to cut $1.5 billion out of our services.”

— with files from Craig Pearson (Windsor Star) and Andrew Thomson (Ottawa Citizen)