NEWS:

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak, Carleton – Mississippi Mill MPP Norm Sterling and Nepean – Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod were at Amsted Design in Stittsville today to highlight how Dalton McGuinty’s greedy $3 billion HST tax grab will hit family budgets in Stittsville and Kanata and fuel the black market for home renovations.

According to an Altus Economic Consulting Group Report, the HST “shifts more activity into the “underground economy,” with implications on government tax revenue, renovation quality and homeowner liability.” The Altus report says 37 per cent of residential renovations are through the “underground or cash economy” representing $5.2 billion in unreported economic activity. A 1998 study found the GST was the principle driver in the underground renovation economy in Ontario and the HST threatens to make the problem even worse.

The HST is just the latest in a string of broken Dalton McGuinty promises not to increase taxes. Ontario families’ budgets are already stretched to the brink with the McGuinty Liberals increased health taxes, taxes on computers, TVs, and iPods, electricity taxes, taxes on tires, plastic bags, and small business taxes.

QUOTES:

– Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak

– Norm Sterling, Ontario PC MPP for Carleton – Mississippi Mills and Critic for Intergovernmental Affairs

QUICK FACTS:

* “It’s going to be like throwing gasoline on a fire in fuelling a boom in the black market renovations.”

–James Bazley, President of the Ontario Home Builders Association, The Toronto Star, Nov. 14, 2009.

• When the HST was implemented in Atlantic Canada it drove one third of the existing home sector out of business and another third into the black market.

• The residential renovation sector accounts for $20.3 billion in investment activity in Ontario with approx $14 billion in contractor renovations and some $6 billion in the “do it yourself sector”. It supports 195,000 legitimate jobs in Ontario.