Politics is about choices. But we can’t make effective choices without clarity. And that means we have to have an adult conversation about taxes and public services. A conversation that starts at A and goes to B, and doesn’t assume something that doesn’t make any sense to get there. A conversation that re-establishes in public discourse a connection between the public services we need and the taxes that pay for those services. The kind of conversation we expect our children to learn to engage in virtually from the moment they can talk.
Taxes and tax cuts
In recent decades we’ve seen a dramatic increase in income inequality, which has concentrated the gains from economic growth in the hands of a small minority at the top of the income distribution. Studies documenting this development cite an unprecedented increase in the amount paid to corporate executives since the early 1980s as a key factor in the growth in inequalities. This trend has been accentuated by tax changes that benefit people with very high incomes.
On January 26, the HRM Council will again address municipal tax reform proposals. But the proposals are merely piece-meal changes. We need to ask and answer fundamental questions about how municipalities raise revenue and develop an easier-to-implement and fairer alternative approach. When asked whether he liked to pay taxes, American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes
This in-depth analysis of Ontario's proposed Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) shows the tax is virtually revenue neutral when viewed as part of a total tax package that includes increased sales and property tax credits and a significant decrease in personal income tax rates.
Hugh Mackenzie was the speaker at a recent CCPA-Rideau Institute event that asked the question, 'can we have an adult conversation about taxes?' This is the transcript of his speech in which he makes the case for rebuilding our government’s ability to make public investments and meet the nation’s challenges.
Look around the world, and you will see example after example of nations conductimg a risky social experiment of "letting the market rule." However, not all societies have succumbed to these pressures- some resist having market principles determine their quality of life.
This document examines the way "letting the market rule" is destablizing Canadian society.
There’s this cartoon about two cows. The first cow has just figured out, to her horror and shock, how hamburgers are made.
“They only fatten us up,” she says, “so they can slaughter and eat us.”
The second cow scoffs at her: “You leftists and your crazy conspiracy theories!”
I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper.
—Pierre Elliot Trudeau, testifying before the Canadian Senate in opposition to the Meech Lake Accord (1988-03-30).
Where is the outrage?
HALIFAX, NS - Nova Scotia Child Poverty Report Cards have recorded changes in child poverty since 1999. Each annual card has tracked progress on the government of Canada’s 1989 promise to end child poverty. The report released today, by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Nova Scotia, is the tenth card, and is being released on the 20th anniversary of Canada’s promise to eliminate poverty by the year 2000.
OTTAWA—Planned federal and provincial corporate tax cuts will transfer $4-6 billion of annual revenue from Canadian governments to the U.S. treasury, concludes a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).