The Taxation Myth

During this election campaign you have heard Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his various mouthpieces maintain that any other party is going to raise taxes. They will spend tax money frivolously. They don't want to give regular Canadian families tax breaks. They want to keep money out of seniors' pockets. They will introduce job killing corporate tax hikes. In short, they will destroy the economy. We will become like Greece. There will be plagues of locusts and rains of frogs! The conservatives had already begun to bang this drum, months before the writ was dropped.

 
Taxes have never been particularly popular. Going back to feudal times, people were required to remit a percentage of their harvest or profits to a feudal lord. In exchange, the lord was expected to send a bunch of knights out to fend off any marauders that might threaten the village. It was, more or less, protection money which allowed the landed gentry live high on the hog while the general populace got along as best they could.

The Public Good

However, in more modern times, the taxes we pay to the government are meant to be spent on programs for "the public good". The public good is open to different definitions. But in Canada, for the past 50 years at least, the public good has included negotiated transfer payments from the federal government to provinces to cover the cost of education and universal health care and to balance out the disparities between provincial populations and economic engines like natural resources and manufacturing. The public good has also included many government programs that look to assist the vulnerable in our society. And it includes things like repairing or building roads and bridges, and safety inspection for consumer goods, food and transportation. Your taxes pay the people who process your passport application, or your building permit when you renovate your home or business. Your taxes pay for emergency response personnel, like paramedics and police and the fire department. They pay for the people who fix the broken water main, and the people who stand on the road telling you to slow down while passing road workers. They pay for programs to keep young people out of gangs and help women entrepreneurs get established in male-dominated industries. They pay for shelters for victims of domestic abuse, addiction treatment centres, rehabilitation programs for offenders, and legal representation for those who cannot afford a lawyer, because Canadian law is based upon the assumption of innocence until proven guilty, and everyone has the right to professional legal representation in court. The public good includes picking up the garbage, ploughing the roads, and maintaining parks. It includes flooding the ice at hockey and curling rinks, and cutting the grass on soccer pitches and baseball diamonds.

The public good is administered by different levels of government. Each collects taxes: municipal, provincial and federal. Each has specific jurisdictions. Municipalities take care of the sports facilities, local road maintenance, garbage collection, public libraries, making sure the traffic lights work and the city infrastructure (like sewers and transit) are running properly. Municipalities also often offer educational materials, like how to compost, or how to create a wind break of trees, and many recreational programs. They may also run local outreach for people in need: the homeless, victims of abuse, the at-risk youth, Municipal taxes pay for local emergency services in many cases. Municipalities collect fines for parking and speeding tickets and other violations of local by-laws and staff is required to process these.

Provincial governments are responsible for administering our world-famous health care system, public education, and provincial parks. Also, provincial highways and roads, provincial police in those provinces that do not have RCMP, and they engage in joint projects with municipalities such as major road projects, flood mitigation infrastructure, etc. Provinces have environment departments that oversee protection of the natural world, and man-made projects that may impact it. Provinces are also responsible for provincial jails.

The federal government is the umbrella entity over the provinces. It collects taxes from across the country, redistributes some to the provinces to balance things out among provinces that are doing very well and provinces that are not doing so well economically so that Canadians across the country can access the same level of services. The federal government is also responsible for issues of national concern. Food safety, transportation safety, national defence, the RCMP, the CBC, protecting our environment, maintaining our national parks and historic landmarks, assisting businesses to gain access to trade in other countries, maintaining our country's presence in providing both emergency aid and longer-term poverty-reduction humanitarian assistance around the world, national programs related to poverty-reduction in Canada, First Nations treaty obligations, and initiatives to support various groups (such as pay equality for women, programs for people with disabilities, arts groups and cultural groups, etc.) all fall under the purview of the federal government.

Essentially, taxes devoted to promoting the public good are positive. We are Canadians. We help our neighbours. We want strong communities and good futures for our children. We want roads that are safe and foods that are safe and trains that don't explode or dump toxic chemicals on our communities or into our water supplies. We want research scientists keeping track of our environment, pushing the boundaries on innovative technologies and health research. We want archives and libraries to preserve our history and our past accomplishments.

Education 

Now, some people say, "I don't have any kids in school. Why should my hard-earned money pay to educate other people's kids?" The short answer is, you don't want to live in a society full of ignorant people, do you? The longer answer is, those children will grow up. If they have an education they will become doctors, lawyers, plumbers, electricians, accountants, journalists, coaches, physio-therapists, scientists, lab technicians, welders,... And they will be the ones deciding who will form the government in the future, what kind of care the elderly are entitled to... And you, if you should be lucky enough to live so long, will be one of those elderly.

Education is one of the two things that governments look to as areas where funding can be cut. This is a foolish perspective. A lot of blame is placed on "greedy teachers" wanting more compensation and benefits. Let's unpack that. The model varies slightly from one jurisdiction to another but, on average, they do an undergraduate degree that takes 4 years. Then they take a teaching degree that averages 2-3 years. So 6 to 7 years in school. This is similar to the educational commitment of engineers , accountants, and lawyers. They often graduate with a lot of student debt. They are required to work weekdays, roughly 8:30 to 4, plus extra-curricular activities they supervise, such as sports teams, student clubs, band practices and performances, drama rehearsals and performances, outside of school hours. Also outside of school hours is preparing lessons and grading student work. Then there is preparing report cards and parent-teacher interviews. And the work day often involves being the only adult in a room with 15 to 40 children between 5 and 19 years old. Think on that for a moment. And the kids may have all manner of baggage, and teachers wind up being counsellors, tutors, advocates, filling in for parents who have more on their plates than they can cope with themselves. And in the midst of all this they are expected to actually impart knowledge, critical thinking skills, and aid in the maturation of these young people. They deal with children who have not had breakfast (Canada is one of a very few countries in the world that does not have a universally accessible national school day meal program), children who are abused or neglected, children whose families cannot afford the "supply list" issued each fall and the teachers often buy supplies for those children out of their own pockets. Teachers actually buy a lot of classroom supplies themselves. Because they really care about the future of their students and they want to provide as enriching an educational experience as they can.

But wait, there's more. Teachers are not only campaigning for more pay and benefits for themselves. They enter into contract negotiations with a shopping list of what they feel the children they work with need. Among the items on these lists are more teachers to keep class sizes smaller. Children do best in a class of between 15 and 20 students. This gives a teacher time to address the individual needs of each student and still allows kids to be part of a complex social group which will help them develop interpersonal skills. They want more teachers aides, to help deal with the increasing number of students with developmental and behavioural challenges that they find in their classrooms. They want more ESL or the Francophone equivalent to assist newcomer students adapt to living and learning in the local language. They want more funding for technological tools and basics like sports equipment and sheet music, textbooks and posters. And if the teacher is in a remote First Nations community, he or she may also be campaigning for new buildings that don't have mould that makes students and teachers sick, toilets that work, water safe for human consumption, and reliable electricity and heat.

"Oh! But they get to laze around all summer! They don't deserve anything. What lucky people!" Well... An awful lot of teachers do professional development courses over the summers. There is a lot of pressure to keep current with technology, psychology, and the latest best practices. And some teach the dreaded summer school, helping kids upgrade so they can start in the fall in the same grade as their peers.

Health Care

Some people say, "I am very healthy. I take excellent care of myself. Why should I have to give up some of my hard-earned money to pay for someone else's health care?" The short answer is, accidents can happen to anyone. You cannot predict the future. There may come a time when you, or someone you love, needs medical attention. The longer answer is, because we pool our resources, we have far more buying power than individuals. This means we can keep the costs of health care far lower than in places where they do not have a universal health care system. Because we have a government administered system, there is no profit motive for private medical services or insurance companies. You may think you could do better on your own, negotiate your own faster health care, but unless you are fabulously wealthy, you are probably wrong. There was a Canadian couple not too long ago who had a baby while on vacation in Hawaii. The baby was premature and there were complications. The couple's travel health insurance company said they would not cover a "pre-existing condition" so they were hit with a Million Dollar Bill for medical fees. This is what private medical care costs. And insurance companies, protecting profits for their shareholders, fight claims for coverage. Even if you have insurance, you can wind up with hefty legal fees from taking the insurance company to court to get them to pay up. We don't need that in Canada. You are fooling yourself if you think it would in any way be cheaper or fairer to reintroduce user-pay private health care.

My Dad, in the 1920s, had appendicitis. He would have died, because this was before universal healthcare, and his family could not afford the surgery. But J.S. Woodsworth (one of the founders of the CCF, which evolved into the NDP, and for whom a building in downtown Winnipeg is named) heard about his illness and got the money together to pay for his by then ruptured appendix to be removed. My mother grew up in rural Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 30s and she had many stories of people who died ( a lot of them children with whooping cough, scarlet fever, polio...) because there was no money to pay a doctor. Universal health care was introduced slowly, beginning in 1946 in Saskatchewan, and it wasn't until 1966 that the Medical Care Act extended health care coverage right across Canada. Still, many people don't remember what it was like BEFORE. And Canadians are bombarded by right-wing think tanks and propagandists who try to tap into any hint of libertarianism in people, saying, "Why shouldn't you have the right to pay for health care with your own money, and have more authority over the kind of care you get?" Wake up, Buttercup. You DO pay for your healthcare with your own money, but at far lower rates than if you were going it alone.

There are problems with our universal healthcare system. Sometimes, mistakes are made. But doctors, nurses, lab technicians all over the world are human beings and mistakes are made everywhere. Some wait times have become too long. Cutbacks in health funding over the years have prevented infrastructure purchases of expensive diagnostic equipment, so there are too many people needing an MRI or CT scan than there are machines available to perform these scans within available hours. And this is another problem many people are not aware of. Diagnostic centres and hospitals  "rent" time on machines and in operating theatres to physicians doing work outside of the purview of universal health care coverage. People wanting tummy tucks, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, and other forms of cosmetic surgery are not covered, unless the surgery is medically necessary. Doctors doing this sort of surgery need to access equipment and facilities, and in times of fiscal restraint, hospitals and clinics see accommodating these doctors as a way to augment their budgets. So, people with medically necessary procedures are getting bumped down the list. This makes people unhappy. And they blame the public sector administration of our health care and feel they would be better off with a user-pay system.

 There are inefficiencies in the system as well. There is too much replication of effort, too much paper-pushing, too many levels of administration and a distinct lack of integrated health records across the country. But that is changing. With the political will to take leadership at the federal level, this can be resolved.

Canada the Good

Canadians are generous and caring people, by and large. This summer, a young mother and three of her children were murdered in a tragic murder-suicide in a small town in Saskatchewan. Right away someone started a crowd-sourcing fund to help the family pay for burials, and care for the remaining child, an infant of 6 months. Within a day they had raised over $36,000 and the hotel in the town had guaranteed rooms and meals for family members who had to travel into town for the funeral. We see it all the time. Someone has a terrible thing happen to them that makes the news and people step up to help.

Falling through the Cracks: Growing Holes in our Social Safety Net

But there are many people in this country whose "crisis" unfolds slowly, over years. Their's are stories that seldom make the news, even the local news. And there is some sense of resentment about taxes going into programs to help these people. There is a terrible tendency for people to view the homeless, the addicted, the "welfare mother", the runaway teen, as somehow morally flawed and not worthy of our help. "They're lazy", "they smell bad", "look how she dresses her kids", "they're weak", "why don't they pull themselves together and get a job like everyone else?" Unfortunately, no one is perfect. I'm not. And neither are you. And we are not all dealt the same hand in life.

No kid, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, says, "a bum", "a crack addict", "someone who passes out on the street", "a thief"... But lives can unravel. Maybe it starts early, with a violent childhood, abandonment, developmental hurdles, poverty, no one caring whether they go to school or not... Maybe it happens later. Adolescent changes can also bring on changes in brain chemistry. Many mental health problems emerge during the teen years. As kids hit puberty, they also become targets for more predators, become susceptible to peer pressure, families break down and sometimes that isn't managed in a way that a kid can cope with.

Crushing things can happen at any time in life. A job loss, a divorce, a physical injury or illness, a mental illness, a bereavement of some sort, can send a person into a downward spiral. Without support, without the tools to cope (which may include education, job skills, a set of  "interview" clothes, counselling, addiction treatment, advocates, mentors, medication, etc.) people can wind up in desperate circumstances. In places they don't want to be. Their tragedies are just as real as the car accident victim's or the wounded veteran's. But they happen slowly, and no one notices unless they glance over and realize the huddle of rags and newspapers in the doorway they are passing is actually a person.

Over the past 5 decades, Canadians have worked at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels to create a safety net to catch those who fall through the cracks. It is far from perfect. Sometimes it seems full of holes. But every single person who is slipping away from the life they want to have is one of us and, as the saying goes, "there but for the grace of God go I".  Canadians, in general, recognize this, or we used to.

When Are Taxes Bad?

Taxes are meant to pay for the public good. By pooling our resources we can do so much more to improve our society than any one individual can accomplish. But what if taxes are misused? What if a government comes to regard the public treasury as their own personal piggy bank? What if social programs are cut: veterans take their own lives because they have no timely access to mental health care for their PTSD, people wind up in jail or dead because the programs for youth at risk, domestic violence prevention, addictions treatment and so on, are grossly underfunded by a government that has "other priorities"? What if bridges crumble and kill people because infrastructure is not a priority, or trains blow up or people are poisoned by bad food because safety inspections are not a priority?

Let's, for the sake of argument, look at the Harper Government priorities and use of tax money. Let's start with $750 million + on advertising to tell Canadians how great they are. And litigation. Anyone who has ever had to retain a lawyer knows that isn't cheap, especially the high-profile lawyers the government hires. And what is this litigation for? To fight veterans and say the government has no moral obligation to look after them. To fight First Nations trying to get support and rights guaranteed in the treaties. To fight a Muslim woman who wants to participate in her citizenship ceremony wearing her cultural garb (you know, because Canada takes pride in our multiculturalism and diversity, allegedly). To fight to keep a child soldier in jail for the rest of his life. To fight to impose unconstitutional laws on Canadians.  Basically, our government has spent a bundle of our tax dollars to fight Canadians trying to get their rights upheld.

And then there are the vote-getting holiday junkets. 200+ to Israel and another large group to Ukraine. There was no need to ferry all these people around the world. No reasonable, common good reason. Only CPC good. Because if you grease the right palms they will tell others to vote for you. And, on top of the advertising to Canadians, there was the multi-million dollar ad campaign to try to sell Keystone to the Americans. And another big expensive campaign to discourage Roma immigrants from considering Canada as a welcoming country,

Then there is the $20 million annual security bill for the PM's personal bodyguard. Also, his stylist and hairdresser and photographers and videographers and crew to put together his personal vanity Youtube channel, 24/Seven. We paid for that. There is his bullet-proof SUV motorcade (and the flying of those cars to India because he had no faith in the local security), the staff that vet all questions he takes from reporters, the staff that keep regular citizens away from his events. The thousands of "communications personnel" hired to "correct" any commentary in social media that did not follow CPC party lines. Yes, those people who rage almost incoherently on comments pages and in social media, swearing at anyone who posts criticism of the government, often verbally attacking them personally.

And there is the special budget to the CRA to investigate charities whose interests do not align with the party line. And the new spy palace for CSIS, and all the extra funds to spy on Canadians. Building new prisons, even though the crime rate has been going down for decades.

You could be forgiven, at this point, for thinking that I am describing North Korea. Sadly, I am not. This is the Harper Government's use of our tax dollars. Under Stephen Harper, yes, taxes are bad.

The CPC Stance on Taxes

Harper will tell us, over and over, that you will have more money in your pocket if they cut taxes. But, if there is not enough money to pay for the health care system, the education system, EI, CPP,  social programs, infrastructure maintenance and development, health and safety regulation and inspection, child care, scientific research, First Nations treaty obligations, veterans benefit... How much do you think it will cost you personally to make sure your kids are educated? That you and your loved ones can have health care when you need it? To make sure you can drive safely from place to place, make sure your food is safe, make sure your water is drinkable? To make sure that Canada meets its obligations in the world?

As an aside note, Harper would like you to see EI and CPP as taxes. They are not. One is insurance against joblessness and the other is a government-supported savings plan for retirement. But if Harper can convince you that they are (gasp!) taxes, he can get you to oppose them, thus making those funds easy plunder for his government. And, as worker powerlessness grows, and corporate power also grows, union power is diminished. Google the Industrial Revolution, working conditions, and see if you would have preferred to live then.

Harper has a belief system that negates the concept of the common good. He does not believe in it. He believes in every one for themselves, dog eat dog, no handouts, no mercy, no compassion, survival of the fittest (richest). And this attitude, if he can sell it, frees up all that tax money so he and his buddies can travel the world, promote themselves, and the Canadian people be damned (except the rich, and his better donors).

Conclusion 

Under a sane, rational, compassionate, Canadian government taxes are good. They should be viewed as making your contribution to the public good. You should feel good because some of your money is going to help people with less advantage than you have. They go to helping veterans who have stood up for you.  They go to helping your neighbour's kid (or your own kid) cope with mental illness or addiction or fend off temptation from the wrong crowd. They help to care for your elderly parents, or you when you are elderly. They allow you to go to emergency when there is a medical need, without it being a choice between medical intervention and paying for food for the next month, or crushing poverty for years. They help to make sure the food we eat, the roads we drive on, the trains that run through our communities, the water we drink, the places we work are safe and don't injure or kill us.

Stephen Harper's government has perverted the use of tax money to fake lakes and gazebos and the Canadian public is understandably cynical. But, he is an aberration. We all want to enjoy the money we earn. But studies show that giving to others less fortunate has a positive effect on well-being and personal happiness. If we had a decent government, we could enjoy knowing that our tax dollars are helping our communities, our society. Keep this in mind during the debate tomorrow night (September 17th) and as the election approaches.