Yesterday’s Quebec budget was one of the most toxic I’ve ever seen. Among the highlights:

-Health Care taxes and user fees
-A pair of 1% increases to the provincial sales tax
-An increase to the fuel tax

Ouch.

Those can’t have been easy decisions to make, but given the debt load facing the province and a stubborn desire to not cut services, they were necessary.

There’s a belief that any government who dares raise taxes will be hoisted upon their own petards and run out of town. Because of that, watching how this budget is received will be make for a fascinating case study.