By Jonathan Birks and Pierre Akkelian
At the end of the First World War, the Canadian government imposed taxes on a number of items to defray its substantial costs. Among them were so-called luxury (inelegantly defined as ‘non-essential goods’) taxes that were applied to products such as automobiles, radios, fishing rods (a sport of the privileged?), and all items the government broadly defined as jewellery. This latter tax was referred to as the jewellery excise tax (JET).
As a result of JET, the Canadian jewellery industry—which overwhelmingly comprised ‘Mom and Pop’ operations with very few employees—banded together in 1918 to form the Canadian Jewellers Association (CJA). Its mission was to establish a common national body to represent the industry in its efforts to lobby the government to rescind what was initially an administrative nightmare for jewellers. It is worth noting that in the years since the government imposed the excise tax, every other industry classified as luxury had come to be exempt, save for ours, making it unjust and prejudicial. It is also interesting to note most Canadians were not even aware of the tax’s existence, which was unfortunate, as this resulted in a lack of public pressure on the government to act.
While there were intermittent attempts by the CJA over a 75-year period to eliminate JET, all were unsuccessful until 1993 when we were appointed consecutive chairs of the Government Relations Committee. This marked the beginning of CJA’s 13-year battle, which ultimately concluded with the Harper government rescinding the tax in May 2006.
During much of the 13 years, we worked in an atmosphere of overt doubt as to our ultimate success, both among our peers and those outside the jewellery industry. We spent considerable time in Ottawa, meeting with the finance minister, deputy ministers, senior members of the Department of Finance, and minister of revenue. We also attended numerous Standing Committees on Finance hearings in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto.
