"Tories slam door on UA," was the consistent headline in most media coverage of the recent national PC convention in Toronto. While their rejection of the Reform-inspired United Alternative concept was definitely newsworthy; another important development in one of the policy workshops was sadly overlooked.

The PC Tax Policy Task Force provided an update on its progress to party members in advance of its final report to be tabled next April. The Tories have assembled an impressive list of tax policy practitioners (bank vice presidents, noted academics, etc.) to help the party hammer out the tax component of the platform it will present to Canadians during the next federal election.

Conservative MP Scott Brison, the party's finance critic and chair of the tax force, was quick to stress that the interim report was merely a catalogue of the ideas under discussion. In effect, the report is a wish list, nothing more, nothing less.

To be fair, the report reflects the overwhelming national mood on our federal tax situation: taxes are too high and need to be reduced. Their musings to re-index the tax system to inflation, remove the 5% federal surtax, increase the basic personal exemption and reduce personal taxes by lowering the effective tax rates and/or raising income tax thresholds are encouraging.

Equally important in the discussion paper is the acknowledgment of the destructive, job-killing nature of the policies that underlie our capital gains framework and the unacceptable foreign content restrictions on RRSPs. Finally, the Tories' willingness to look at the issue of joint family tax returns resurrects a recommendation of the Carter Commission on Taxation (1966).

But the most troubling aspect of this report lies in the idea of mortgage interest deductibility. And other than passing mention of a flat tax, there is no real meaningful discussion of tax reform. Joe Clark first included the option of mortgage interest deductibility as part of the 1979 Tory platform. It never saw the light of the day because Mr. Clark and crew had a "little trouble" counting votes for Finance Minister John Crosbie's first and last budget.

Nonetheless, the idea made good political sense. Interest rates were sky high, making the costs of home ownership very prohibitive if not impossible for many Canadians. Today the idea also has political currency as the average age of first-time home buyers continues to climb. In spite of record low interest rates, many young Canadians are burdened with excessive student and credit card debt thus postponing any home acquisition decisions.

Yet this is a case where good politics makes for poor fiscal policy. Deducting mortgage interest would create a huge entitlement that once embedded in the tax code, may be impossible to root out. Moreover, this concept negates the 5% down payment and CMHC-backed mortgages now available to first-time buyers. Nor does it account for measures such as tax-free RRSP deductions for home purchases or the capital gains exemption on the sale of a principal residence. Tax policy already does its fair share for home buyers.

The ultimate goal should be to make our tax system simpler and fairer. By further loading our system with credits and deductions, true tax reform is pushed further and further back. Come the next federal election, the Tories will be crowded out as other parties tiptoe through the tax tulips. The quickest route to electoral success is to dig up the soil and plant a new garden of tax reform. The 200 or so Tories that crammed the tax policy workshop were looking for this approach as are millions of taxpayers. Are the Tories or any other party ready to start digging Only time will tell -