Matthew Lau: More taxes, less civilized society in both B.C. and Toronto

In the next two weeks, millions of Canadians have an opportunity to extricate themselves from disastrous NDP rule. British Columbians head to the polls on Oct. 24 with a chance to replace the NDP provincial government that has been in office since 2017. Torontonians vote on Oct. 26 to either end or extend Olivia Chow’s time as mayor. Which NDP disaster has been more disastrous? It is hard to say.

Begin with taxes. Since 2017, the B.C. NDP raised the corporate tax rate from 11 to 12 per cent, imposed a payroll tax of 1.95 per cent of employee remuneration, twice raised taxes on upper-income earners (in 2018 and again in 2020), increased numerous property and property transfer taxes, hiked the income tax rate for the lowest bracket, expanded the provincial sales tax and imposed “bracket creep” to effectively raise income taxes perpetually as inflation pushes people into higher brackets. It now proposes, if re-elected, to increase the top marginal tax rate yet again. Taxes in B.C. have become deeply uncompetitive. A recent Fraser Institute commentary suggests the province could be on its way to “economic oblivion.”

How about Toronto? Olivia Chow has had only three years to hike taxes compared to the B.C. NDP’s nine, but in that relatively short time has made Torontonians pay dearly for electing an NDP mayor. Since 2023, Chow increased property taxes 19.6 per cent, including a 9.5-per cent increase in her first year that CBC called a “historic” tax hike and “the highest in decades.” She made the city’s vacant home and land transfer taxes much more punitive. And her budgets raised water and garbage pickup fees 3.75 per cent in each of the last two years, well above the inflation rate.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” But he wrote that in the United States in 1927, when taxes as a percentage of GDP were less than one-third of what we currently pay in Canada. Today, as NDP rule in B.C. and Toronto shows, higher taxes do not pay for a more civilized society but instead have been accompanied by greater disorder.

In B.C., Statistics Canada’s Violent Crime Severity Index increased 31.7 per cent from 2017 to 2025, and the province’s two most populous cities show increases again in 2026. The Vancouver Police Department reports a 3.6 per cent year-to-date increase in violent crime, while Surrey Police Services says “person crimes” (such as assaults, sexual assaults, robberies and shootings) are up 20 per cent.

The provincial government’s statistics show homelessness increased by 35 per cent from 2019 to 2024. Other data, including reports from the City of Vancouver and BC Housing, suggest 2025 was markedly worse. The B.C. NDP has also overseen a horrific drugs crisis. Back in April 2016, the Liberal provincial government declared a public health emergency after 474 people died from using illicit drugs the previous year; since then over 18,000 people have died, including 1,833 last year.

The NDP’s policies on drugs and injection sites have been ruinous, the outcomes a heart-wrenching disaster. A recent National Post essay by Allen Abel describes Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where addicts are “clustered in pairs and trios, high as jets, deaf as trees, and mute as clouds. Many are folded forward at the waist like the letter L, staring down at the filthy ground, defying gravity, eyes vacant, lost in space.”

Similarly, Joe Warmington writes in the Toronto Sun of the all-too-common scene in some of that city’s neighbourhoods: garbage everywhere, syringes littering the sidewalk, some with the needle still intact, and “then you hear the moaning, groaning, yelling, swearing and suffering. For families, walking along there is terrifying. It feels like a death strip.”

More examples of a less civilized society: Toronto has been plagued with repeated antisemitic violence and demonstrations, including hate rallies in a Jewish residential neighbourhood. Unfortunately, Olivia Chow has consistently taken the antisemitism crisis far too lightly, refusing to attend a mayoral debate on it. In B.C., MLA Selina Robinson resigned from the NDP in March 2024, citing in her resignation letter the antisemitism of two of her fellow NDP MLAs and the silence of the rest of her NDP colleagues in the face of it.

The recent experience of British Columbia and Toronto clearly shows that electing NDP politicians results in higher taxes and a much less civilized society. The next two weeks offer voters in these two jurisdictions the chance to reverse course and begin to un-do the damage.