Axing the tax — for what?

Opinion

Manitobans are famously thrifty. We’ll drive across town for a deal on Bothwell cheese, track gas prices down to the cent, and happily line up to save four cents a litre. If Manitoba had an honest provincial slogan, it wouldn’t be the baffling “Made from What’s Real,” it would be “Cheapest and Best.”

So when a politician promises to axe a tax and put more money back in our pockets, it’s no surprise people get on board.

The carbon tax has been an easy villain. Every time you fill up, there it is, an extra cost, visible and frustrating.

The rebate, in contrast, is abstract. And when rent, groceries and utilities keep climbing, a quarterly lump sum doesn’t feel like a solution.

The federal Conservatives knew this. They leaned into the anger, reducing complex economic struggles to three simple words: “Axe the Tax.” It worked. The pressure built.

And now, Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney has agreed. Not because the tax wasn’t working, but because keeping it became politically impossible.

And yet, once it’s gone on April 1, life won’t be magically cheaper.

Gas will still be expensive. Groceries won’t be suddenly affordable.

And that rebate? Gone too.

Because the problem was never the carbon tax, it’s that Canada’s entire tax system is designed to squeeze personal income while letting corporations off the hook.

Canadians pay tax at every turn; income tax, sales tax, property tax, hidden fees baked into daily life.

Many people I know are proud of their contributions. They see taxes as an investment in health care, schools and social programs. But we’ve been sold a false divide. The right wants to cut taxes, the left defends them.

Meanwhile, corporations quietly enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in the world, lower than the U.S., Bangladesh and India. Lower than they were before a decades-long bipartisan effort to stay competitive.

And yet, here we are, still struggling.

The logic of corporate tax cuts, like trickle-down economics, has never really held up. But it’s always been easier to blame a tax you can see rather than a system you’ve been trained not to question.

This isn’t new. Conservatives have opposed every major user-based tax for decades — the HST, early carbon pricing, any system where bigger users pay more. These taxes were dismantled in favour of broad-based taxes, the kind that creep up unnoticed.

Why? Because corporations don’t want to pay, and it’s easier to rile people up about a tax they see rather than a tax they never had to think about in the first place.

The carbon tax, flawed as it was, at least pushed some of the burden onto those profiting most from pollution. Soon it will be gone.

The cost won’t disappear, it’ll just be shuffled elsewhere, less visible but still landing on regular people.

So where does that leave us?

If we actually want to reduce the tax burden on working Canadians, scrapping the carbon tax was never the answer.

The real fix is raising the basic personal income exemption so people can earn more before taxes kick in, stopping corporate subsidies to industries that gouge consumers anyway, and closing tax loopholes instead of cutting services.

None of these are as catchy as “Axe the Tax,” but they’re the real levers that could make a difference.

And here’s the kicker.

Conservatives campaign on scrapping taxes, but once they’re gone, they have no solutions for why life is still unaffordable. And that, too, is part of the plan.

Because the moment people realize the carbon tax wasn’t the real problem, they might start asking who is.

MJ Jonasson is a Winnipeg-based thinker and advocate for community-driven change.