Province has helped reduce property taxes, But it's done with our money
Editorial

The provincial government has been doing a lot of nice things with the money in its coffers lately.

If you don't believe us, just ask a municipal politician.

The local elected officials have been singing the praises of the crew at Queen's Park, for all the grants that have been downloaded.

The government announced in March that a good chunk for future surpluses would be channeled to municipalities. And later in the month, we had the provincial budget, that allocated $400 million to municipalities to be spent on local roads and bridges.

There have been other recent examples. At the Regional level, setting the budget this year was made a lot easier by the phasing out of GTApooling, which has drained millions from the local coffers to help offset the community and social services burden that has been carried by the City of Toronto.

No one can argue that all this financial support isn't awful darned nice of Premier Dalton Mcguinty and his government, but shouldn't we keep in mind from where the money is really coming? It's coming from your wallet. McGuinty and company are making the municipalities' day with tax dollars, provided by all of us.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been wrestling through our income tax forms. Did you get a good look at the Ontario Tax portion? At the end of it, they've stuck in a chart to calculate your contribution to the Ontario Health Premium.

You must remember the health premium. That's the tax that McGuinty pledged during the 2003 election he would not impose, then had it included in the 2004 budget. And such is the state of the provincial finances these day that revisiting the premium, reducing it or, better yet, doing away with it is out of the question.

Alas, we all had the chance to do something about that in October, and let it slip, handing the McGuinty crowd another majority government.

The health premium is here for the foreseeable future. Yet the government seems to have all this money that it can put big smiles on the faces of municipal politicians, at the expense of the taxpayers.

Like we said, it's awful darned nice of them.