On minor contributions

The Star points out just how little benefit there is to be had in relying on voluntary contributions to a government end:

(W)hile (Greg Sorbara) still likes to blame former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris for leaving Ontario's finances in a mess after eight years of tax cuts, there is some money that keeps rolling into provincial coffers year after year thanks to Harris and his successor, former finance minister Ernie Eves.

It's the Ontario Opportunities Fund, where a few Ontarians – and few they are – contribute all or part of their tax refunds to defray the provincial deficit. There's a box to tick on the last page of the annual income tax form.

Last year, the fund raised $121,202 – not even enough to pay the $157,633 annual salary of a cabinet minister...

The fund was launched in 1996, the year after Harris surged to power with his Common Sense Revolution promising to cut taxes and slash government spending. In the end, that political formula left the province with an annual deficit of more than $5 billion when the Liberals took power in 2003.

Perhaps fittingly, that's also the year Ontario taxpayers – no doubt feeling flush with cash from all those tax cuts – ponied up $254,419 to the opportunities fund, a peak it hasn't reached since.

And lest anybody accuse Ontario's Cons of having figured out how insignificant any voluntary contributions would be:

(T)he opportunities fund could bring in bigger contributions if the Liberals did more to make taxpayers aware of it, says Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory.

"If they bothered to promote it at all they could probably get the number up quite significantly and that would be good for Ontario as well."

In fairness, the fund certainly can't be seen as a bad idea in principle, and its participants deserve plenty of credit for their willingness to help out Ontario's financial situation. But the failure of the fund to have more than the slightest impact on the province as a whole should cast all the more doubt on any claim that voluntary participation is likely to be a viable means to any important end.

Meanwhile, it also speaks volumes about Tory's mindset that he apparently hasn't learned anything from the fund's minor contribution under the Harris regime as well as the current one. Even if it's indeed true that the fund could be brought back to its original numbers through more consistent reminders, it's entirely likely that that amount could be recovered many times over by even a relatively minor crackdown on back taxes (or choice not to extend a single random tax benefit as Tory's federal cousins seem so eager to do). Which means that for a province looking to eliminate its deficit, the most important step has to be to empower a government with a better sense of proportion than Ontario's Cons past or present.