Both provincial opposition parties believe the temporary tax cuts announced at the federal and provincial levels yesterday are being used as a way to gain some ground before elections are called.

PC Leader Tony Wakeham says the cuts are more about politics than they are people.

Wakeham says if both levels of government are serious about helping people, then they should be eliminating the carbon tax and the sugar tax.

Instead, Wakeham argues they are introducing tax relief for a couple of months. He calls that “an example of a government that’s desperately trying to move up in the polls and get re-elected, and I think the people of Newfoundland and Labrador see right through that.”

The tax cuts are something the federal NDP support – though they want to make it permanent.

NDP Leader Jim Dinn says when his party tried to introduce a private member’s resolution on eliminating the provincial portion of the HST on home heating last week, it was soundly defeated, and when they asked questions about removing the provincial HST on children’s goods, the idea was also shot down.

Dinn says the only explanation he can think of for the “sudden turnaround” is that the finance minister was “visited by three ghosts last night.”

“You know there must be an election coming when they start stealing NDP ideas,” says Dinn. He continues that the Liberals can’t do enough to distance themselves from such proposals, but “when it comes to election time, it doesn’t take much to start putting forward ideas that we’ve been promoting all along.”