September 29, 1999



Dear Premier Doer:

Congratulations. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) wishes you and the new NDP caucus well as you form the next government and carry forward your mandate into the next millennium.

The CTF will continue to keep a close eye on the province's finances, now under the NDP's watch, and continue to press for controlled spending, democratic reform and tax relief.

We look forward to working together on a few key policy issues. For example, the CTF has long pressed for changes liberalizing our access to information laws. Costly fees to access public information from government has always been a thorn in the side of the CTF and the media, who rely on the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (FIPA) to uncover waste and hold governments accountable.

In a survey to the main political parties sent just prior to the election, the Manitoba NDP committed to reform FIPA if elected. Your party's position: "The public interest fee waiver should be extended to all subject matters, not just health, safety or the environment." The CTF would welcome this reform and looks forward to its enactment.

The NDP electoral victory should not be mistaken as a province-wide rejection of tax relief. A vote against the PC party is not necessarily a rejection of tax cuts. Mr. Filmon was not incorrect to sound the alarm bells on the growing tax gap - only a bit late to take leadership on the issue.

Premier Romanow's emphasis on tax relief in the Saskatchewan election should caution the tax-cuts detractors that the issue is alive and well. The latest poll by the federal Liberals found that Canadians are now equally distressed about high taxes as they are with health-care funding.

Even Ken Georgetti, the new head of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), recently championed the tax relief cause. Mr. Georgetti argues that Ottawa should "significantly raise the threshold at which workers start to pay tax." Indeed, the current threshold is now $7,131 before taxes are applied. This represents about half a year's wages for someone working in a minimum wage job. Mr. Georgetti goes on to note that such a move (increasing the thresholds) would "give a tax break to everybody."

The Manitoba NDP should take the next step and call for immediate re-indexation of income tax brackets to put an end to stealth taxation, more commonly known as bracket creep. In 1999, working Manitobans will pay an extra $104 million to the province and $350 million to Ottawa in automatic personal income tax hikes from bracket creep.

Above all, bracket creep hurts the poor. The Caledon Institute figures that bracket creep has pulled more than one million low wage workers into the income tax net and pushed 2.5 million taxpayers into high tax brackets in the past twelve years.

Tax relief and access to information reform are two areas where the NDP government can count on broad-based support, including that of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.