Ontario 'fleeced'of $1.2B

Feds levy GST on Hydro's debt

Ottawa Sun - October 10, 2002
By Bill Rodgers

It's being called a billion-dollar tax grab and the financial fleecing of Ontario consumers.

The feds are hauling in an estimated $1.2 billion from Ontario consumers by charging GST on a debt retirement charge now appearing on already skyrocketing residential hydro bills.

Walter Robinson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation called it "reprehensible."

"We don't pay GST when we pay off our bank loan," he noted.

The issue was raised in the Commons this week by Sarnia-Lambton Liberal MP Roger Gallaway who told Sun Media that "it's a gross perversion of what we were led to believe the Goods and Services Tax was to be."

Pickering-Ajax-Uxbridge Liberal Dan McTeague has complained in a letter to Finance Minister John Manley and Revenue Minister Elinor Caplan.

"Since when has GST been applied to a debt payment?" he said and urged the ministers not "to abet this financial fleecing of Ontario consumers."

The finance minister has promised to look into the matter and reply in writing to Gallaway at an unspecified time.

Hydro customers in Ontario are now paying down more than $20 billion of debt rung up by the former Ontario Hydro.

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