Here’s an easy way for Premier Tony Wakeham to make it cheaper to raise a family in Newfoundland and Labrador: Take the provincial sales tax off children’s essentials.

The idea is already on the table.

Newfoundland and Labrador New Democrat passed a resolution at their convention in St. John’s last month. It calls for a point-of-sale rebate that takes the provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax off everyday children’s goods such as clothing, footwear and car seats.

Good ideas don’t carry party cards. The New Democrats deserve credit for putting this one forward. But Wakeham sits in the premier’s chair, so he’s the one who can make it happen. He should take the idea and run with it.

Parents don’t care whose name is on the press release. They care what the bill says at the checkout.

Here’s how the tax works.

The HST in this province is 15 per cent. Five points go to Ottawa and 10 to the provincial government.

When parents spend $300 on a car seat, the provincial government takes $30.

Or when they spend $120 on winter boots and a snowsuit, it takes $12.

But kids outgrow boots, snowsuits and sneakers faster than parents can pay for them, yet the government takes a cut every time.

A point-of-sale rebate would leave those dollars in parents’ pockets. No forms to fill out, no cheque to wait for.

And this isn’t a new idea. Ontario already takes its share of the HST off children’s clothing, footwear, diapers, car seats and booster seats right at the till. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island give parents the same break on kids’ clothing and footwear.

Three of the five provinces that charge the HST already do this. Yet Newfoundland and Labrador isn’t one of them.

Why does this matter so much here?

Start in the maternity ward. Newfoundland and Labrador’s fertility rate fell to an all-time low of 1.08 children per woman in 2025, according to Statistics Canada. The province needs about 2.1 children per woman to hold its population steady. We’re not even close.

And if you ask young couples why they’re not having kids or why they’re stopping at one: The answer is money.

Sixty-five per cent of Canadians say they’re choosing to have smaller families because of financial concerns, according to Ipsos polling.

Yet while the cradles sit empty, the province keeps getting older.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the first province in Canada where more than a quarter of the population is 65 or older. The median age here is 47.8, more than seven years older than the Canadian figure, according to the provincial Department of Finance.

This province was five years younger than the rest of the country in 1971.

The population pyramid is now upside down: wide at the top, narrow at the bottom.

And an upside-down pyramid is an expensive thing. Health care already costs taxpayers $5.4 billion a year, nearly half of every dollar the provincial government spends. The pressure is about to get worse.

The Department of Finance projects the 65-plus population will grow more than 20 per cent by 2045. The 75-plus population will grow about 61 per cent. Older populations need more health care. Every one of those bills will land on a shrinking pool of working-age taxpayers.

That’s the squeeze: Fewer kids today means fewer workers paying the bills tomorrow.

Taking the sales tax off children’s essentials won’t fix the province’s demographics by itself. Nobody has a baby to save 10 per cent on a car seat. But making it more affordable to raise a family is a good start. It tells young families the government is on their side instead of in their wallets.

The New Democrats put the idea forward. Wakeham should grab it, make it law and let parents keep more of their own money. That’s a win for families today and for every taxpayer tomorrow.