At the end of February, the winner of BC's NDP leadership race will take the reigns of power and control of a $21 billion budget. Given the importance of that event then, here is a (brief) look at some NDP candidates and what their ideas might mean in practice for BC's budgets and taxpayer's wallets. In the first of a three-part series, Corky Evans is the first one put under the taxpayer microscope.

"It is not fun to tax the rich," said Corky Evans back in 1993, "only fair." Evans, as quoted on his website, supports tax reductions for low-income earners but wants taxes on "the wealthy" held where they are "until the richest 10% make only 50 times more than the poorest 10%." Elsewhere, the candidate endorses shifting taxes from those that affect job creation to higher taxes on energy, consumption, waste and pollution.

Observation #1: If tax cuts are to stimulate the economy and promote investment - which even other NDP candidates assert that they do - then such cuts will also have to go to people that make decent money if they are to have any significant effect. Besides, politicians have raised taxes on all income levels for three decades. It is not radical to demand that taxes now be reduced on all income levels. Mr. Evans is too concerned about redistributing wealth rather than creating it.

Observation #2: Canada has a pretty low definition of what constitutes massive gobs of wealth. $65,000 is where the highest income tax brackets kick in. High-school principals make more than that. It's time for Mr. Evans to revisit what constitutes "wealthy."

Observation #3: Shifting taxes to consumption may be a sensible idea, though it makes little difference to taxpayers' backs if taxes are merely shifted from one shoulder to the other without actually having the load lightened. On taxing energy and polluters more severely - well - kiss goodbye some interior and northern jobs in oil exploration and mining. On a curious note, while economists argue that consumption-based taxes are generally more efficient than income taxes, Canada's Left has generally favoured lower consumption taxes. Mr. Evans is going against the company grain in favoring shifting taxes to consumption, i.e., higher sales taxes.

Corky Evans talks about "completely re-thinking government" but taxpayers should not think that means smaller government. Observation #4: Mr. Evans has come out solidly in favour of more expansive and expensive government, including "pay equity" in the public service (a spurious concept that has nothing to do with equal pay for women, but with measuring public service jobs that are as different from each other as apples are from oranges) and universal day care. Moreover, Mr. Evans told a Cranbrook crowd that BC's bureaucracy had been cut too severely.

Like every other NDP candidate, Mr. Evans blames BC's budget woes partially on Ottawa, and in so doing shows he has not read up on transfer payments as of late. Besides, the Ottawa-card is a red herring: there is only one taxpayer. The real issue is how much is spent in BC, not how much is collected from taxpayers via Ottawa. Corky Evans, decent fellow as he may be, seems to have an unlimited faith in the ability of taxpayer money plus politicians to solve private ills. That hardly reveals a man who has learned the lessons of the past nine years, not to mention the last century.