Ontario Premier Dalton Mc-Guinty and Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan have stated that the so-called Ontario Health Care Premium "is here to stay." The government is, nevertheless, required by law to "review" it anyway. With an ailing economy, one would hope common sense might turn their heads and lead them to use the review as an opportunity to deliver much needed tax relief.

To date, the health tax has taken a total of $12.2-billion out of the pockets of families, businesses and individuals in Ontario -- enough to build 12 new Rogers Centres. The tax revenue has already grown from $1.7-billion in 2004-05 to a whopping $2.8-billion projected for 2008-09 -- a 65% revenue increase in only five years.

Even though the government has buried the health tax review in the dead of summer and said the review won't make a whiff of difference, individuals and groups, including the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, showed up at committee to argue for the tax's elimination.

The fact that the Ontario health tax represents a key broken promise by the McGuinty government should be justification enough for it to be eliminated. However, there are other good reasons.

First, the health tax provides a money crutch for government, merely enabling its runaway spending, which has operated at twice the combined rate of inflation and population growth.

Second, Ontario GDP is close to zero growth and 1.4% below what was predicted. Unemployment is up sharply to 6.7%. With the Ontario economy close to a recession, broad-based tax relief for individuals, families and businesses would help spur spending, savings and a return to healthy growth in the economy.

Third, in its press release announcing the health tax, the Mc-Guinty government touted two other provinces as examples to follow: British Columbia and Alberta. If Ontario wishes to continue following the example of other provinces, it should indeed follow the latter's lead. Alberta axed its health tax in its last budget. This leaves Ontario and B. C. as the only two Canadian provinces with a health tax.

Fourth, the so-called Health Care Premium is intentionally misnamed in an effort to fool Ontarians into believing they are paying for health care. There is no doubt this tax would have been eliminated had it been named the "bureaucrat salary enhancement levy." Health care premiums pay for health care no more and no less than does the new electronics tax, the new paint tax, the business tax, the insurance tax, the gas tax or the hotel tax.

By calling the tax "a premium" the government is trying to equate it with an insurance premium, like the ones Ontarians pay for their car or home insurance. If this were accurate, the level of the premium would fluctuate up and down depending on how much one used health care. It does not. The tax is not dedicated to or used for health care. It is a spend-happy government's way of lining the public treasury.

Finally, health care spending in Ontario has grown at a fairly constant rate, both before and after the imposition of the tax, just as it did in Alberta. If the tax were really for health care then health care spending should have jumped. It did not. What did go up were projects like corporate welfare to Americanbased multi-nationals and slush funds.

The one project the government should really get behind instead is tax relief. It can do this by getting rid of the health tax crutch that props up its out-of-control spending. - Kevin Gaudet is Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.