So my mom is reading Hugh Mackenzie's article on taxes in the recent CCPA Monitor. She agrees with his critique that conservatives and liberals and others have de-linked the discussion about taxes from the contribution taxes make to covering public services.
Fine.
I'm also glad he put out the number of 50 billion of lost revenue per year from cut taxes since '95 according to the OECD.
However:
1) It is unfair to minimize the regressive nature of sales taxes specifically, or to cowtow to corporate thugs who use their wealth to buy media rants against corporate taxes.
2) It is inaccurate to imply that public services benefits enjoyed in the sixties were due exclusively to tax revenue.
On the second point,
The Formation of The Bank of Canada
Until the BoC opened in 1935, The Treasury Board, which administered the Finance Act of 1923, had no responsibility to see that advances made to the banks answered the needs of the economy. The unsatisfactory nature of that arrangement was revealed during the Great Depression. In 1934 Parliament passed the Bank of Canada Act, and the bank itself was founded a year later. Since 1938 the bank has been owned entirely by a single shareholder- the federal government (i.e., Canadian taxpayers).
The Use of The Bank of Canada, 1938 - 1974
The 'nationalization' of 1938 perfected the mechanism that allows the central bank to create money to finance federal projects on a near interest-free basis. It may make loans to the Govt. of Canada or any province (BoC Act Article 18 (c), (i) (j) or guaranteed by Canada or any province (c). This is explained fully in our "Article 18" link (see left).
Initially, the bank fullfilled its mandate. It was of great assistance in getting Canada out of the Great Depression, financing the war, and building infrastructure and social systems in Canada into the 1970s. But then things began to change. [www.comer.org Bank of Canada Tutorial ]
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The CCPA Monitor has also carried Armine Yalnizian's speech on the Regina Manifesto which included a call to renewed use of the Bank of Canada, using measures of National Wealth as collateral. http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/regina-manifesto-s...
*Further, the CCPA has included a tidy summary by one COMER member on some of the political dynamics within NGO and party circles around conflicting foci on taxes or use of the Bank of Canada:
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/borrowing-trouble
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Why can't we advocate for use of fair taxation and the Bank of Canada in paying for public services and infrastructure?
It is correct to critique Harper's reduction in transfer payments to the provinces and to call instead for an increase in transfer payments of several percentage points of GDP, but these transfer payments can come from different sources.
Provincial politicians should not be cutting food subsidies for the poor, nor increasing sales taxes that disproportionally hurt the poor, nor privatizing and cutting critical public services.
Politicians and pundits should be calling for increased transfers from the federal government, use of the Bank of Canada to fund provincial and municipal services- recycling public money back to the public, public audits of the private corporations and bankers who make untold wealth in derivatives markets, and a proportional tax system which doesn't let the richest go scot-free.