Lying in wait

For years now, it's been an open question as to what Brad Wall's promises not to make changes on issues such as Crown corporations and the HST actually meant. But Wall's interview with the Globe and Mail's report on business makes the answer entirely clear:

Why not a harmonized sales tax?

I’m not a member of the church of harmonization orthodoxy, at least as long as this jurisdiction has other tax modification priorities. Our corporate rate is too high; our small business thresholds are too high. We want to make progress on both of those. We have three tiers of [personal] income tax and we’ve said that a flatter system is important as we want to attract more entrepreneurial folks. We started with reforms in last year’s budget to reduce the property-tax share of education funding. This is a capital tax, and frankly a capital tax is far more insidious for an economy than the lack of harmonization.

How do you respond to business leaders who say you are too timid in easing the weight of government, such as the province’s Crown corporations?

We have a growth agenda for the province. We need to continue to get re-elected to continue to make these changes, maybe not as fast as people would like. But improving the economy’s competitiveness is a process, not an event.

Of course, there's another alternative which Wall has already latched onto in pushing ahead with policies he's promised not to implement. (Who's up for some tax WEPAnization?)

But the difference between Wall's strategy with the TILMA/WEPA and the other areas of controversy seems to be based solely on the time frame for his planned reversal. Wall leaves no doubt that tax harmonization is part of his long-term vision - just as soon as he's made other parts of the tax system more regressive first. And that likewise, he sees privatizing the Crowns as part of "these changes" that he ultimately intends to carry out - but he's biding his time for now until he's softened up the anticipated public backlash.

In other words, Wall has outright admitted that his promises not to private Crowns or harmonize taxes don't actually mean anything when it comes to his intentions in government; instead, they're merely political ploys to strengthen his grip on power, the better to enable him to do later what he's promised not to do now. But fortunately, there's an obvious way for Saskatchewan voters to stop Wall before he gets the chance to declare that all previous promises are null and void.