I have been thinking more about legacies, even though I think the whole concept is overrated.
Thesis: Harper’s legacy was to make consumption taxes toxic. Cutting the GST was a real turning point. Trudeau’s effort to reverse the GST cut with this carbon tax is proving politically untenable.
Mb backing away. On, SK and eventually Ab opposed. Even if the courts uphold the fed power to raise money by any means or mode, I suspect we won’t have a carbon tax in ten years. Maybe five.
To be more precise, rolling back the GST and the political albatross that is the carbon tax is a strike against flat rate consumption taxes of the sort the OECD loves.
The combination of Reg pension plans, RRSPs and Flaherty accounts (TFSA) gives us close enough to a progressive consumption type tax.
