The Woodford Files

With the election coming up on October 10, my thoughts have turned to which party will get my vote. One thing’s for sure – it won’t be the Liberals. In the past two years, the McGuinty government has declared war on small publishers in Ontario by not only hitting us with an 8% provincial sales tax on our printing costs, but also an industry-wide tax audit that claims the PST is retroactive for the past four years. This required many publishers to pay four years’ worth of back taxes on their printing bills. In Vitality’s case that amounted to $85,000. Add to that the legal and accounting fees spent fighting the tax assessment, and our own costs so far add up to over $110,000.

But we’re a feisty little company committed to publishing the best health magazine in the province, so although we staggered under the weight of this tax hit we have dealt with it and look forward to a great future. Other publishers, though, have already gone under, and many more are involved in legal challenges to the audits. The irony is that: 1) this is the only province in Canada where free magazines are not PST exempt, and 2) the big daily and weekly newspapers in Ontario already enjoy PST exemption.

When I broached the subject of PST exemption for free magazines at a recent all party debate, Finance Minister Sorbara had little to say. But the NDP, Green Party, and Conservative candidates all denounced this tax assault on small publishers, and agreed that free magazines in Ontario should be PST exempt because of their important contribution to the cultural life of the province.

Furthermore, the Greens and NDP are the only parties to publicly endorse natural health and alternative medicine for preventing disease because they know that it serves to reduce the burden on our healthcare system and thus on Ontario taxpayers. Indeed, effective health care reform will require a shift in emphasis from expensive disease management with drugs and surgery – to a focus on keeping people healthy and out of doctors’ offices in the first place. Initiatives like PST exemption for vitamins, herbs, homeopathics and health foods would be a good place to start. And making these items tax deductible, the same as drugs and dental expenses, would be another good step. The Liberal strategy of building more hospitals and hiring more doctors is only a band-aid solution that doesn’t address the core problem of why Ontarians are getting so sick in the first place.

Further, the party that gets my vote will genuinely understand the role of environmental pollution in causing cancer, asthma, and diabetes, and take aggressive action to reduce it. That means big government incentives for both clean energy sources and conservation. The Greens have the most comprehensive platform on reducing air and water pollution that I’ve seen. The NDP has also given environmental health serious consideration in their platform,  and even the Conservatives are now promising to expand renewable energy sources and give tax incentives for energy efficiency. As both the Greens and NDP admit, nuclear power is not the answer; it’s dangerous and expensive, and the last thing I want to do is leave a legacy of uranium mines and radioactive waste to my grandchildren (which is what we get if the Liberals stay in power).

What we need is a shift in leadership away from the status quo and toward more enlightened governance that puts human health above all else. That would be a breath of fresh air.  JW