So without bothering to seek any additional perspectives, some mainstream Canadian media continue trumpeting the Fraser Institute’s decades-old rhetoric that the average family is terribly overtaxed.
Count on a conservative “think tank” masquerading as a non-partisan organization to paint big broad brush strokes that attempt to reduce an extremely complex issue into a sensational claim spun specifically to trigger a knee-jerk emotional response.
And newspapers such as the Toronto Sun don’t hesitate to jump at the opportunity for sensational headlines like Lorne Gunter’s Aug. 26, 2017 column “It’s time for a tax revolt in Canada”, in which he cites the Fraser Institute’s dubious assertion that a typical family sees 42.5 per cent of its annual revenue ruthlessly snatched away by one level of government or another.
However, not everyone — including this journalist whose tax situation is not much different from the average yet does not pay anywhere near that much in accumulated taxes — is buying the eyebrow-raising rhetoric that Canadians are getting ripped off by their governments.
“This declaration fits the classic model of propaganda: a deliberately oversimplified statement designed to elicit an emotional response instead of a rational one. It generates resentment at government, implies a whole range of bad intentions from irresponsible politicians and a ‘bloated’ bureaucracy, and promotes isolation between government and citizens,” wrote Murray Dobbin for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in a paper called Ten Tax Myths.
“This blanket declaration begs many questions. Which Canadians are overtaxed? All, or just some? Overtaxed compared to what and whom? Other countries? Does it mean we are overtaxed compared to what we get for our taxes? Compared to what we used to pay in taxes? Overtaxed in relation to the revenue we need for good public services? Or might it mean, if we actually examine the situation, that low-income Canadians are overtaxed compared to wealthy Canadians and large corporations?”
Demanding that the government simply “lower our taxes!” completely ignores these serious questions, and also “makes a real debate about taxes more difficult, allowing governments to reduce taxes on high-income earners and corporations without public opposition — which is exactly what happened in the 1980s.”
The paper Dobbin authored almost reads as though he had published the work recently. However, the document actually dates back to October 1999. Yet the Fraser Institute’s incessant narrative remains just as pervasive today, if not more so.
But the claim that Canadians are overtaxed should be framed in a more thoughtful context.
Government workers, as a friendly reminder, are not anonymous and emotionless automatons greedily and recklessly finding inventively deceptive ways to waste our money while they relieve themselves on golden thrones. That might be the case in a despotic regime in a developing country, but not in Canada.
They are educators, health-care professionals, municipal workers, emergency responders and scientists. They all need well-maintained and functional facilities equipped with the proper tools to fulfill the duties they have taken on in service to improving society.
And like it or not, these monumentally challenging logistical feats require no shortage of administrative positions — more commonly typecast as dreaded bureaucrats. And of course government workers also include our politicians, who we elect to take the helm and make decisions that impact all of those departments, for better or for worse.
In short, to borrow from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., “Taxes are the price of civilization.”
Perhaps Canada really is in need of a tax revolt — one that revisits a fairer contribution from the 0.01 per cent, instead of increasingly shifting the tax burden onto the shoulder of the middle class while the super wealthy continue to amass untold fortunes in offshore tax havens. Despite what some politicians on the right are trying to sell, the richest people will not all suddenly run away in the face of higher taxes, leaving us poor peons jobless and starving in the streets.
Surveys of executives who decide where to invest and locate a new venture show that taxes rank from fifth to seventh place in terms of priority considerations. That’s fairly low on the list, behind factors such as an educated labour force, access to resources and markets, electricity costs, land costs, borrowing costs, labour costs, the strength of the local currency, as well as social infrastructure and quality of life, wrote Dobbins, whose words sum it up much better than I ever could.
“Even in Alberta, where conventional wisdom suggests people are most suspicious of government and hostile to taxes, the vast majority of citizens polled by the Klein government repeatedly said that Alberta’s government surplus should go back into the Medicare and education programs slashed by the government. Only a handful said they wanted more tax cuts. Canadians say this because they know that, if we are to have a civilized society — one not determined exclusively by the dictates of the private marketplace — we must be willing to pay for it.”
None of this is to say wasteful spending should be overlooked or forgiven — quite the contrary. Accountability should be a top priority with protections in place for whistleblowers.
But egregious examples of embezzled or wasted funds are less the norm and more the exception.
So the next time you hear the Fraser Institute claim that we are overtaxed, remember the idea is to rile your emotions so you won’t ask questions about the billions of dollars that major corporations and the wealthiest 0.01 per cent siphon out of our economy every year.
— Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up, a Great West newspaper
