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Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Making a difference

In July after the City of Toronto voted to postpone bringing in new taxes (that were approved last week) I sent an e-mail to everyone on city council criticizing their response to the tax revolt and what would need to happen for citizens to accept these new taxes.

Today I received a thank you from councillor Minnan-Wong. He stated that my e-mail along with thousands of others were instrumental in opening the public debate on how the city should be run. These included compromises on the taxes and the independent review board looking into the cities spending.

It is nice to think that expressing my opinions helped to make a difference at least in a small way.

1 comment:

happyduck1979 said...

From Caliban 18, but he had trouble posting it for some reason


Taxation has two sides to the coin, revenue and tax, give and take. At this rare moment in history oodles of cash is being burnt on worthless consumer goods. Because there pockets of obscene wealth, this spending is unprecedented. If the discretionary income is there, why not redirect some of that income to the improvement of the infrastructure that allows the spending to take place? GST was supposed to be a tax on discretionary spending. Why give up the revenue when there are policy objectives that could be fulfilled? Debt reduction, if nothing else. Frankly, if it discouraged some people from spending and encouraged them to save, this would not be a bad thing.