air tax

Stephen Harper is on record as saying that, so long as he’s Prime Minister, “there will be no new taxes.” Yesterday, Mr. Harper’s Industry Minister suggested there will be some new user fees.

Followers of the English language may note that if, in the government’s estimation, there is no difference between a “copyright levy”—collected by the government from those who make a specific purchase for use toward to a specific purpose—and a “tax,” there would seem consequently to be even less room to claim a difference between an “airport user fee” and a “tax.”

As a follow-up to our previous discussion on the important, or merely semantic, difference between taxes and user fees (see here and here), we compare and contrast the following.

Officially it is called the Airport Travellers Security Charge. Introduced in 2002, it was reduced from $24 to $14 in the Liberal government’s budget for 2003. Hansard shows two references to the charge from Stephen Harper, Canadian Alliance leader and leader of the opposition at the time, during the session of Parliament when that budget was tabled, the first of which links to this speech, delivered in response to that budget.