And politicians wonder why people don’t trust them. Here was Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty - after flying constantly in the face of reason by telling us his new harmonized tax will be good for us - explaining that, well, gee folks, there’s nothing he could really do about an outrageous sweetheart deal those same taxpayers are giving to the tax collectors.

“There is an agreement in place,” said McGuinty. “I think we have a responsibility to respect those contracts.

“I guess the alternative is we could introduce legislation in the House and say, ‘You signed a deal and we signed a deal, it is no longer convenient for us to respect that deal.’ So, where does that take you?”

Good question. Except, of course, it’s the wrong question altogether.

The point isn’t that McGuinty and his Liberals should break a deal they made with the unions to give Ontario’s 1,251 tax collectors “severance pay” of up to $45,000 each - even though they are not being severed.

The point is, why did McGuinty make such a damn fool deal to begin with? Quite apart from the complete nonsensical claims about how many jobs combining the PST and GST will create - nobody explains how that works - it is absolutely obscene for the Liberals to grant severance pay to employees who, in most instances, won’t even have to change their desks. They’re simply moving from provincial tax collectors to federal tax collectors. Yet they’re being treated as if they are losing their jobs and need compensation.

In British Columbia, where the HST also becomes an ugly reality July 1 - and when you, dear taxpayers, begin paying the complete tax on many things that aren’t taxed that heavily now - their Liberal government managed to negotiate a deal whereby their tax collectors will keep their seniority and pension rights - which is absolutely fair - but will not get severance pay.

The Liberals explain that there is nothing they could do and they respond to Tory critics by saying that the severance legislation was brought in by a Tory government under John Robarts in 1970.

You can look it up, and you’ll find that at the time the legislation was aimed at protecting workers who were losing their jobs. These people aren’t losing their jobs.

As Wellington-Halton Hills Tory MPP Ted Arnott put it, “They’re not going to miss a day of work, and their being paid up to $45,000 to change their business cards.” Finance Minister Dwight Duncan - clearly more interested in taking cheap shots at legitimate questions than he is in protecting taxpayers - replied to Arnott that, “It’s an interesting position that he takes today, having had a Conservative put that clause in the collective agreement and now saying that we shouldn’t honor it.”

What utter nonsense. Does Duncan really expect people to believe that something put in a collective agreement 40 years ago must never be changed? Does he really think we’re all morons? Does he really

believe that we’ll blame the government from four decades ago for something our current government had to agree to or it wouldn’t still be in the collective agreement?

Perhaps they do believe we’re all idiots. How else to explain the lamebrained explanation offered by Leslie O’Leary, a spokeswoman for Ontario Revenue Minister John Wilkinson, who pooh-poohed claims from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that “Taxpayers already lose once with the HST. Now they’re losing twice.”

Not so, says O’Leary. The money comes from funds put aside every budget to provide severance due to job loss and attrition. She says this “is within this allocation and as such has no incremental cost to government.”

Where to begin? First, this isn’t “severance and attrition.” None of these people are losing their jobs. They’re simply switching employers. (And, by the way, how come if this tax harmony was supposed to save on duplication, we still need as many tax collectors as we had before?) But worse, where exactly does O’Leary think this fund comes from? How can she say there is no cost to government when the money for that fund comes directly from the taxpayers? It really boggles the mind that they expect the public to believe this tripe.

The union claims their members are losing their jobs. “That is a termination,” says one official. No it’s not. It’s just a job switch. I don’t blame the union for taking the deal - why wouldn’t they? - but surely the fair thing would have been to follow the B.C. example by protecting pensions and seniority. There is no legitimate rationale for paying severance to people who aren’t losing their jobs. Simple as that.

McGuinty could have negotiated a taxpayer-friendly deal, but he didn’t.

Instead, he’s stiffing us with new taxes, and he’s gouging us with a sweetheart deal for the tax collectors. Remember that next time you vote.