"You can't tax an economy into prosperity", said Harper, arguing against the notion of taxing financial institutions to cover the previous and future bail outs.  He also argued against penalizing Canadian banks since they were restricted from engaging in the "opportunities" that led to the bail outs.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2010/05/18/harper-bank-tax-protest.html

Why is it ok to tax the heck out of the citizens and not the financial institutions (who actually have the money)?  This just kind of sounds like the "the rich have the right to get richer, screw everybody else" attitude that I've come to expect from the PC's.  I'm not necessarily saying that the banks should be taxed more, but on the other hand, if they don't pay for it, I know I'll have to.

I can't wait until the story breaks about where Harper's bribes are coming from...

You think the BANKS are going to pay any taxes?  As with any business, they'll just pass the burden on to the customers.  Can't cut into precious profits!  Taxing the banks will just mean more service fees for you.

The $70 Billion the cdn government "gave" our banks was not a bail-out.  We literally bought their loans and the gov will be making money off it.  It was just a way to give the banks more capital, so they could continue to make new loans (mortgages, etc).  At least that's my understanding of it.

I think the problem is the way we do business in general.  The trend is that if we want businesses to stay in Ontario we give them huge tax breaks, auto, bank, etc. Therefore business are paying less and less of the burden of taxes.  This is done to keep companies from skipping off to other jurisdictions where taxes are lower.  

In this case I do agree somewhat with the Harper government.  We, ie our banking system, should not be made to pay for the errors of other countries' systems.  The only way I would agree with it is if the other banking systems emulate Canada's... but that's unlikely to happen.