Suitable for framing

Sure, it would be tempting to respond to the Fraser Institute's pro-HST blitz with some of my earlier debunkings - including such hits such as:

(A)nybody saying "the HST will create 591,000 jobs" can be dismissed as either not knowing what they're talking about or lying through their teeth.

But rather than doing that, let's instead note the institute's willingness to depart from its usual no-tax-increases-ever stance when a policy serves to transfer the tax burden from corporations to families:

While many British Columbians have been led to believe that the HST is a significant “tax grab,” the reality is that it is not. The HST will have a negligible impact on the average family’s total tax bill.

The average family will pay slightly more provincial sales tax under the
HST than it would have under the existing PST ($3,382 in HST compared to $3,133 in PST, an increase of $249). However, personal income tax reductions imple mented to ensure that the HST is revenue neutral for government will result in an income tax decrease for the average family (from $11,245 to $11,040, a decline of $205). All told, the average British Columbian family’s total tax bill will increase by $44 (0.12 per cent) from $37,562 under the PST to $37,606 under the HST.

So unless the Fraser Institute is prepared to acknowledge that it's simply making up excuses to facilitate business-friendly policy at the expense of mere citizens in contravention of its supposed core principles, we can safely say from now on that any tax increase (or lack of cut) of anything less than $44 per family per year is "negligible" and not "significant". Which should make for a useful standard in response to all future Fraser Institute attempts to nickel-and-dime government out of existence.