This society needs a good debate on socio-economic basics. The whole rhetorical system should be flushed out. Look at media reaction to the Ontario budget, which raised taxes (called a health premium) so as to salvage the basic social goods of health and education. I don’t just mean predictable headlines in the National Post (Tax hike is biggest since NDP) and Sun (LIARS). Even at public media like CBC and TVO, journalists voiced shock over Liberal lapses in the sacred areas of balanced budgets and lower taxes.

This orthodoxy pervades our society. At election time, they hold a gun to leaders’ heads and say: Do you vow to balance budgets and not raise taxes? Hesitate and they shout: Answer: Yes or no!

Whether Ontario’s budget measures can save health care and education, I don’t know. But at least they challenge the orthodox notion that all taxes are bad, rather than being the way a society expresses its social nature and achieves things together that its members cannot as individuals. In the United States, where the orthodoxy flourishes, taxes tend to be kept so low that the claim is self-fulfilling. Here it is becoming true for sectors like students, which accounts for the lamented voter apathy among youth. Show the young that public policies can enhance their lives and they, too, may vote.

It feels as if the debate first took place within Ontario’s government, or perhaps inside Premier Dalton McGuinty’s head. Maybe I’ll bring back photo radar and sell the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, and then I won’t have to raise taxes. But he realized — BOING — it was insane to think you can restore schools and health care without paying for them with taxes. Now he must reproduce that thought process in the public arena. The question is: Will he debate the case with zeal, for the sake of our society’s democratic (and physical) health?

The media are a huge obstacle to having this debate since they are so captive to the prevailing orthodoxy. The Globe‘s Murray Campbell says the Liberals “are doing everything they said they wouldn’t do,” which is dyslexic commentary. They said they would try to fix social programs, and they are; they said they would not raise taxes, which was false. But the only part that registers is the taxes. The Globe‘s Richard Mackie says the budget is “designed to persuade voters that the government has achieved a balanced budget before the next election” as if that is a big scam, as if the only balancing that counts is yearly. No one conducts their own finances with such arbitrary rigidity, even if it’s demanded by neo-con dogma.

As for lying: There are solemn vows and there are stupid ones, made under schoolyard-style pressure and intimidation. I think it’s grownup to know that. As for the “big lie” they told, according to the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, I’d say another big one was that cutting taxes and similar neo-con remedies would lead inevitably to better lives for all.

Why should Ontario Liberals take this fight on?

Well, I don’t think you can make basic changes without public support, and that will only come by challenging the orthodoxy and having the debate.

Also because they could win it, according to polls. Voters in Vancouver have said they would accept a tax hike for more cops; those in Ottawa, to avoid cuts in services. A national poll in 2002 found a majority would pay higher taxes for better health care, which Ontario’s budget provides — so why is it treated as leprous? A huge poll in Western Canada last month found a majority would rather pay higher taxes than cut services. Harper country.

But if you listened to talk radio in Ontario yesterday you’d have thought everyone hated having their taxes raised (which they may, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t support it). Even at the “left-wing” Toronto Star, orthodoxy reigns: Columnist Ian Urquhart said the Liberals made a “huge gamble” by “betting . . . Ontarians’ appetite for higher spending in health care and education will overcome their distaste for higher taxes.” But it’s not so huge. It’s a good bet, if they have the guts to back it up.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.