Colour Me Unsurprised: We Pay Too Much Tax

We’ve heard a lot about the 2% cut to the GST and the Conservative cuts to marginal income tax rates somewhere in neighbourhood of 0.5% for the lowest income bracket, but Statistics Canada shows we’re still spending more than we did last year:

Despite the tax-cut boasts of governments, Canadian families paid six per cent more on average in personal income taxes last year, which remained the single largest expense for families, even ahead of keeping a roof over their heads.

In total, households spent an average of $69,950 in 2007, up 3.3 per cent from 2006, Statistics Canada said Monday in its report on family expenditures, noting that the increase was also more than a full percentage point above the 2.2 per cent increase in the cost of living last year.

Among major expenditures, however, it was personal taxes that posted the steepest increase, rising by six per cent to an average of $14,450. As a result, taxes ate up 20.6 per cent of the average family budget, up from 20.1 per cent in 2006, and reversing a generally downward trend from an all-time high of 21.9 per cent in 1996.

Spending on shelter, the second largest expenditure, rose 5.1 per cent to an average of $13,640, in large part due to a more than 10 per cent increase in mortgage interest rates.

Of further interest, our childless country that requires so much investment in immigration seems to have bottomless pockets for pets, spending more on their favourite feline or canine than the average cost of a child. Methinks our priorities are somewhat warped in this nation.

The rest of the article is also worth reading, although it’s probably important to note that even if government cut taxes, you can see from the laundry list of expenses in that article that there would quickly be an increase in some other area to shore up the problem of suddenly having money to spend. I worked a lot of overtime recently, and I noted that the government took so much of it away that I was working for about 8-buck an hour all told. See, when government disincentivizes production, you’re going to see an natural reduction in the production of the economy. Nobody wants to wait until March to get their interest-zero money back.

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This Just In: Opposition Never Happy. Never.

So Stephen Harper goes against fiscal conservatives and advocates who call for no bailouts for the auto industry, including polls that show strong opposition from the very people he represents, bringing about praise and gratitude from the unions, and what does the opposition do? They whine. They whine and complain and whine some more. And it’s not surprising, really. This Conservative government has operated as a de facto small-l Liberal government for the past three years, and it still hasn’t been good enough for the opposition parties, who I can only imagine must now qualify as far-left. The only party a centrist is now left with has to be the Conservative party.

Word that the federal and Ontario governments will provide the struggling auto sector with $4 billion in emergency loans was blasted by opposition critics and was lauded by industry and union spokesmen.

Liberal MP John McCallum, speaking yesterday on CTV’s Question Period, agreed aid is necessary but criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government for being late to the table and offering few details of the federal package announced on the weekend.

He expressed concern the deal may not do enough to maintain Canadian jobs.

The announcement Saturday by Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty in Toronto came a day after President George W. Bush offered US$17.4-billion in emergency loans to General Motors and Chrysler. Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty had promised Canada would offer 20% of the U.S. funding, reflecting the scale of the country’s role in the North American auto industry.

McCallum said: “If we put up 20% of the money, we should have a guarantee that Canada has 20% of the production and the jobs.”

Nothing is ever good enough for these people. Nothing. If you do one thing, they deride and abuse it, regardless of merit. If you do another thing, they still complain. If you then comply with their own plans, they accuse you of being slow on the upswing. I have come to the conclusion, therefore, that the opposition is completely useless when it seeks only to “oppose”, rather than work with the government on policies commensurate with the aims of all invested.

As for the so-called “guarantee”, you’re not going to see one. No company would be silly enough, or at least I hope not, to agree to some kind of guarantee that would bind their ability to make cost-cutting moves to save their company. But then again, beggars can’t be choosers, which is why I opposed the whole bailout in the first place. Hey, what do I know? I haven’t understood a thing Mr.Harper has done since about November.

Oh and, will the opposition stand up for the “majority” of Canadians who don’t want a bailout at all? Or would that not be convenient?

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The People Of Afghanistan "Have This Incredible Resilience"

I’ve been an open supporter of the Afghan mission since day one. Which, I suppose, isn’t saying much, since the Liberals initiated the first foray into the country to assist in defence and reconstruction. The mission has changed somewhat over the years, but the essential aims have not. To help the innocent of Afghanistan restore their country to peace and order. The Globe and Mail has an article about a local Vancouver aid worker, Lauryn Oates, who began her work in Afghanistan after hearing how badly women in Afghanistan were treated. Her work has taken her to the country many times since 1997, and she has become one of Canada’s leading advocates and fundraisers for educational reform in Afghanistan. Her story is at once inspiring, and a reminder that hope is not lost, even among the most desperate:

Education, she said, is the key to getting the country on its feet after decades of war. “Through education, you can address human rights,” she said, recalling a conversation she once had with an illiterate Afghan man who believed women’s brains were much smaller than men’s, hence his certainty that they were inferior creatures.

Ms. Oates is also the project director for a Canadian International Development Agency-funded teacher-training program.

What distinguishes her from a raft of other aid workers is her nimble ability to multitask.

When she’s not at home fundraising, she’s in Afghanistan overseeing the projects herself. She also does aid work in Uganda and is at work on a PhD in education at the University of British Columbia.

[...]

Today, seven years after the NATO-led invasion that ousted the Taliban, she is aware that Afghanistan fatigue has set in among the Canadian people.

More than 100 Canadian soldiers have been killed since the mission began and security in the country is spiralling as Taliban insurgents wage a deadly campaign. Canadian aid workers and journalists have been the targets of kidnapping and ambushes and in August, Ms. Oates’s close friend and mentor, Jacqueline Kirk, a Montreal-based aid worker with the International Rescue Committee, was killed in a road ambush near Kabul. Two colleagues and a driver also died when gunmen opened fire on the car.

[...]

Still, each time she returns to Afghanistan, she is buoyed by the progress she sees.

“Canadians seem so focused on the bad, and certainly that is compelling. But for some reason it doesn’t seem to sell to point out all the good things. Just in our small project, we’ve seen incredible changes.”

She said the Afghans she encounters, all ordinary, mostly rural people, are terrified at the prospect of a return to Taliban control.

In the past year, Ms. Oates said, Canadian Women for Women has helped build a new school for girls near Jalalabad from $75,000 raised entirely by Canadian donations.

Contrary to naysayers, Ms. Oates said, ordinary Afghans want international aid and intervention.

“People have this incredible resilience,” she said. “If they’re willing to go on, we have to be behind them. The least we can do is stand by them. This is not about charity or pity. I would never tolerate this in my country.

“I’ve learned how to be a human being there. There is such unbelievable hospitality and kindness, contrasted against such cruelty.”

If we won’t listen to the people of Afghanistan, will we listen to our own who have been among them? To paraphrase Lauryn Oates: “it’s not an option to give up”.

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Harper Adds 18 To Ottawa Senators

Well, one thing you can say about the Conservative Party of Canada: they certainly enjoy destroying Liberal “records”. Unfortunately the records they’re breaking aren’t the ones you might write home about, mainly comprising huge shifts in spending increases and advertising. Now it’s federal appointments in one day to the Senate. 18 of them.

This is pretty much being seen as precisely what it is: a move to fill the vacancies in the Senate in the unlikely event that the government is felled in the new year and a coalition government supported by Gilles Duceppe comes strolling into power. The only unusual part are the appointments. As one blogger put it, CTV broadcaster Mike Duffy now becomes a mouthpiece for the Conservative party, but this time officially.

I’ve already written about my distaste for this move before, so I won’t go into it again, except to say that both sides are right, and wrong, but for different reasons.

The opposition is correct when they say this move reeks of partisan gamesmanship, rather than some kind of move to reform the Senate, and is transparently being done during a period in which the government had to desperately ask the Governor General to prorogue Parliament to stave off defeat. They are incorrect, however, when they use flowery language to cover the fact that it is precisely what the Liberals have done themselves in the past. Remember also that a mere two weeks ago we were hearing about possible “progressive” appointments to the Senate. So Stephen Harper’s Senate appointments are only hypocritical in that he held himself to a higher standard than his enemies for these many years. The argument that the extra Senators will cost $6 million more and is irresponsible in this fiscal climate doesn’t wash, and moreover it sounds weak coming from an opposition that has never had any trouble finding appointments for allies.

The Conservatives are correct, however, when they say that the Senate conundrum is a chicken-egg paradox. While I have no doubt that this move has nothing to do in the near or even far future of reforming the Senate, it does seem like the only way to bring about democratic reform. Sometimes you need a dictatorship to install a democracy. And I do understand that. As well, each Senator being appointed has promised to resign their post and run democratically if and when reform ever does take place.

There’s also good reason to go easy on the outrage meter, in light of the following facts:

Even with the new appointments, though, the Liberals continue to hold the majority in the 105-seat upper chamber. They have 58 seats while the Conservatives, with Monday’s additions, have 38.

The new senators also help balance some of the regional inequities that Harper was facing in his caucus.

Four of the new senators fill vacancies from Quebec, three seats each in British Columbia and Nova Scotia are now occupied, two each from Ontario and New Brunswick and one each from Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and Yukon.

So while the appointments mark a definitive change from the Harper doctrine, it definitely addresses the inequity in the chamber and among regional imbalances. Of course even ignoring all of what that entails, you still can’t please everyone. Some are miffed that Mr.Harper appointed only 4 women out of 18 senators.

Related

The Hook has a roundup of blogger reaction.

Victor Wong has some interesting thoughts on the specifics of the appointments.

Joanne has her usual plethora of links and, as always, the real meat is in the commentary.

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Pedophiles Try To Fight Constitutional Protection For Children

Update

Another day, another child molester.

A B.C. daycare worker gets 2 years less a day for sexually molesting a six-year old. Essentially that’s like letting the guy go. What in God’s name is wrong with this justice system?

Kyle David Lennax, 23, was convicted in B.C. Supreme Court in September of sexual assault, sexual touching of a child and invitation to sexual touching involving a child.

[...]

“I have concluded that a fixed term of imprisonment is necessary to bring home the significance of this crime and the consequences that will be meted out to those who commit such vile acts against a young child,” said B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett.

And two years less a day accomplishes that noble notion of meting out justice… how?

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Original post

What a ridiculous country we live in sometimes, where the courts even bother to hear constitutional challenges for pedophile rights, let alone the appeals when these cretinous lowlifes lose. Witness the insanity:

VANCOUVER – A Burnaby, B.C. art dealer charged with sex crimes in three countries has lost his bid to have Canada’s sex tourism law declared unconstitutional.

Kenneth Klassen, a married father of three, now appears likely to become the first Canadian to go on trial for sex tourism charges. He is accused of 35 sex crimes involving underage girls – some as young as nine – in Colombia, Cambodia and the Philippines, between 1997 and 2002.

His lawyer argued that the sex tourism law was unconstitutional because the offences are alleged to have occurred outside Canada. But Justice Austin Cullen of B.C. Supreme Court said a nation has a sovereign interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children, regardless of where it occurs.

If convicted, Klassen faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Incredible that raping children carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. I suppose that’s some kind of legal calculation that involves a great deal of logical reasons I can’t personally think of right now. And I’ll bet the legal challenge to the fact that Mr.Klassen is a rapist of children was very fancy and technically correct and in order. But the simple fact of the matter, the very basic and incontrovertible truth here, is that Mr.Klassen isn’t denying he rapes children for personal amusement. It’s that he thinks it’s okay as long as he doesn’t do it in Canada.

Enjoy your stay in prison, Mr.Klassen. Here’s hoping you go into general population.

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We Should Euthanize The Auto Industry

The big bold letters across the TV Screen are frightening. And the superlatives are even more so. Auto failure would leave 600,000 jobless. 517,000 Ontario jobs at risk. Auto failure could cost 582,000 jobs. When you throw around numbers of half a million people out of work, it does sound pretty bad. Some superlatives, however, are a little over the top, such as this one from Ontario’s Economic Development Minister Michael Bryant: “economic equivalent of a nuclear freeze with catastrophic effects that would knock us into a deep recession”. How does one work in the word “nuclear” in a discussion about the auto industry?

The fact is that Ontario’s auto manufacturing sector is about to go under without government intervention, and that has the Provincial Liberals running for federal aid:

The report by the Centre for Spatial Economics — which does forecasting work for the federal finance department — projects 323,000 jobs in Canada would be lost immediately, with 281,000 of those in Ontario.

Within five years, the job loss across Canada would climb to 582,000. The vast majority of those jobs — 517,000 — would eventually be lost in manufacturing-heavy Ontario.

The impact would start in the automotive sector, then ripple out to other parts of the provincial economy such as the retail and service sectors.

[...]

David Paterson, vice-president of corporate and environmental affairs for General Motors of Canada, told CTV Newsnet that automakers desperately need access to funds to keep their businesses afloat.

“What we’re really looking for is access to liquidity, which we cannot get from the banking sector right now with all the credit locked up,” he said Tuesday.

“We really are looking for temporary loans that we’ll repay once we get through this restructuring.”

Here’s my view. The auto companies may employ a great deal of Canadians, and that’s an important part of the economy. It’s also been a traditionally strong and heavily protected sector by unions and government. But the companies that ran their businesses into the ground so carelessly do not require government assistance in life support to sustain their enterprise. The last place we should be putting our money into is areas that have shown market inefficiency and signs of collapse. In a free market system we should be investing in areas of expected growth and sustainability, and there is absolutely nothing that indicates there is a sustainable industry for auto manufacturing in Ontario into the 21st Century. We are witnessing the dying of an archaic and historic part of the economy.

Yes, the times will be hard by trying to absorb so many Canadians suddenly unemployed. But not all of this need be necessarily bad. It will certainly bankrupt Employment Insurance, causing us to reevaluate the usefulness of state-appropriated income for a collective unemployment fund instead of encouraging individuals to prepare for their own rainy days. It will create an across-the-board assessment of socialist spending programs that are inherently unsustainable with a burgeoning population. It will create a slowdown in immigration as auto sector workers adapt to new and more efficient areas of the economy in training and education, reducing but not negating the need for high levels of migration.

In the end it should be the logical fact that paying ourselves to work is not a sustainable enterprise, since it relies on borrowing money from efficient sectors of the economy and dumping it into the ones that are treading water. Let the auto industry go. Let the archaic and powerful unions crumble. Let the economy go where it’s most efficient by the forces of supply and demand and innovation. But let us not make the mistake of thinking we can save this old man on his last legs. It’s time to euthanize, and let go.

Pedophiles Try To Fight Constitutional Protection For Children

What a ridiculous country we live in sometimes, where the courts even bother to hear constitutional challenges for pedophile rights, let alone the appeals when these cretinous lowlifes lose. Witness the insanity:

VANCOUVER – A Burnaby, B.C. art dealer charged with sex crimes in three countries has lost his bid to have Canada’s sex tourism law declared unconstitutional.

Kenneth Klassen, a married father of three, now appears likely to become the first Canadian to go on trial for sex tourism charges. He is accused of 35 sex crimes involving underage girls – some as young as nine – in Colombia, Cambodia and the Philippines, between 1997 and 2002.

His lawyer argued that the sex tourism law was unconstitutional because the offences are alleged to have occurred outside Canada. But Justice Austin Cullen of B.C. Supreme Court said a nation has a sovereign interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children, regardless of where it occurs.

If convicted, Klassen faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Incredible that raping children carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. I suppose that’s some kind of legal calculation that involves a great deal of logical reasons I can’t personally think of right now. And I’ll bet the legal challenge to the fact that Mr.Klassen is a rapist of children was very fancy and technically correct and in order. But the simple fact of the matter, the very basic and incontrovertible truth here, is that Mr.Klassen isn’t denying he rapes children for personal amusement. It’s that he thinks it’s okay as long as he doesn’t do it in Canada.

Enjoy your stay in prison, Mr.Klassen. Here’s hoping you go into general population.

Bloc MP Elected, Quebec Town Loses Entitlements, Town Whines

An amusing, if not entirely rib-shatteringly funny article in the Globe today about the Quebec town of Trois-Rivieres, and their loss of federal welfare… I mean entitlement… I mean subsidy, because they elected a Bloc M.P.:

MONTREAL — The recent election of a Bloc Quebecois MP may have cost the Quebec town of Trois-Rivieres a $2-million federal subsidy for its 375th anniversary celebrations, Trois-Rivieres Le Nouvelliste has reported.

Radio-Canada quotes sources from the office of Tory MP Christian Paradis, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Quebec lieutenant, as saying the Conservative candidate Claude Durand would have had a better chance of netting the subsidy than the current Bloc MP Paule Brunelle.

Radio-Canada reported that a spokesperson for Mr. Paradis confirmed the federal government wouldn’t be granting the subsidy.

On a campaign stop in Trois-Rivieres during the elections, Mr. Harper told Le Nouvelliste that the grant money had already been allocated and that he “was looking forward to working with a Conservative MP.”

Mr. Durand had also promised to get the $2-million subsidy if elected.

Oh, that vile and evil Stephen Harper, plotting and scheming again to keep Canadians from their well-deserved subsidies. Never mind the fact we elected a separatist representative in the Canadian Parliament, because if we don’t get our $2 million blood money to put on celebrations that glorify our nation-province, we’ll stop paying taxes and declare independence tomorrow. We will also fart in your general direction, Canada.

Mr. Levesque added that the Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore floated the possibility of a $200,000 subsidy.

“They told me: ‘If we give you $200,000, will you be happy, Mr. Mayor?’ So if I’m not happy, will I not get the $200,000?” he said.

This is kind of like a street person scoffing at the loonie you just handed him while he nevertheless slides it into his pocket and proceeds to call you an asshole.

Social Engineering In Ontario Liquor Laws

It would seem illogical, perhaps, to think that only a few days ago I advocated against selling alcoholic beverages in movie theatres. Wouldn’t that be inconsistent with my libertarian leanings and attempts to control the responsibility of the population? Well, yes and no. I also support liquor laws when they pertain to impaired driving, since it’s also my neck on the line out there when people can’t drink and decide not to take public transit home. Similarly with movie theatres, the enjoyment of everybody can be ruined by a single person who isn’t being “responsible”. But the odious price-fixing of Ontario’s beer laws being based on some kind of ridiculous social engineering formula to ensure we don’t assist alcoholism, is an insult:

The Ontario government last month quietly hiked the minimum price that can be charged for beer, to $25.60 from $24 for a case of 24 bottles.

That 6.7 per cent increase in the floor price of a case, bottle deposit excluded, has nothing to do with supply-and-demand, production costs, overhead or distribution expenses.

Instead, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario sets minimum prices as part of its “social responsibility” mandate established in 1993. Translation: If alcohol is too cheap, you may abuse it.

It isn’t just the idea that because we have a social responsibility to alcoholics, that we should all pay more to deter abuse, nor the clearly interrupted logic of that concept. Nor is it that I care whether people in Ontario have to pay a few cents more on the bottle for a 2-4, since I can recall on one hand how many times I’ve required that many bottles for consumption. But that the government has any hand in price regulation whatsoever is an absolute affront to the free market system, controlled “substance” or not. Worse yet, it appears that this wasn’t some ridiculous Provincial LCBO decision made by some back room lackey with too much time and not enough work on his hands. It would appear this choice morsel has come directly from the Ministry of Finance itself.

“The Ministry of Finance recommends an increase to the minimum retail price for beer effective November 24, 2008,” says a memo distributed to board members for their Oct. 15 meeting in Toronto.

Then these LCBO phonies attempt to pass it off as an inflationary adjustment, as though that makes more sense than the Ministry of Finance looking for pennies to increase revenue trickles. But if that’s what it is, come out and say it. Don’t pass it off as altruistic formulas for “responsibility” or stuff about inflationary adjustment after gasoline just tanked and transport costs have been more than halved.