By Klaus Rohrich
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Government in Canada seems to have a lot in common with the Mafia. Both seem to be engaged in a never ending quest to acquire ever more revenue, both convey the appearance that they really don't have a lot of money, both can be profligate spenders and big tippers and both have enforcers most people want to avoid. Only difference is government in Canada generates a lot more cash than the Mafia does, at least according to Statistics Canada who just released a report that all levels of government in Canada generated a surplus of $29 billion in fiscal 2007. This figure is $1 billion higher than the revenue government generated in fiscal 2006.
The word "surplus" is key in that it means governments are collecting way more in taxes than they need. Given that the average Canadian family has 45% of its income confiscated by the various levels of government, Nearly one-third more than they spend on food, shelter and clothing, one would think that governments would give some of that money back, or at least use it to pay off debt.
But like the Mafia, government in Canada continues to grow and along with it so does the money it confiscates from its citizens.
Even when so-called "conservative" regimes are elected something seems to happen to them that causes them to become spendaholics. The National Post's Andrew Coyne wrote a column that decried the reluctance of nominally conservative governments to curb spending and reduce the size of government. There have been only two Canadian politicians in the past 30 years that have actually done something to curb spending, Ralph Klein and Mike Harris.
When Klein became premier of Alberta in 1993, he undertook to bring that province's financial house in order by cutting government spending and reducing the size of Alberta's bureaucracy. Of course, as the austerity program started to show results and Klein was able to entirely retire Alberta's debt, he also acquired a spending habit that made him look more like a Liberal when he retired in 2006 than a Conservative. Klein's successor, Ed Stelmach, who nominally is also a conservative, has opened the taps wide an government spending in Alberta is now nearly out of control.
Mike Harris, on the other hand, initiated his Common Sense Revolution in 1995, when elected premier of Ontario, and actually set out to keep his campaign promise to cut government spending and reduce the size of the Ontario government. Harris cut welfare rolls, pared back the bureaucracy and initiated tax cuts. He dealt with the province's teachers' unions and imposed fiscal controls on education. He took the province out of recession very quickly, as his reforms resulted in a fiscally healthier Ontario. As the economy improved Ontario recovered from recession and the rest is history.
Of course the sob sisters were outraged and vilified Harris as if he were Satan himself. They blamed everything from original sin to the Walkerton tainted water tragedy on the premier. When Mr. Harris finally retired in 2002 his successor, Ernie Eaves reverted to the tax and spend model of governance and Dalton McGuinty, Eaves's successor is taxing and spending even more.
We now have a Conservative minority government in Ottawa that is swelling the ranks of the bureaucracy and shoveling out money like there's no tomorrow. Like the minority Liberal government of Paul Martin before them, they have a huge surplus in the federal budget, yet the Harper government isn't using the money to pay down the debt, nor is it giving any of it back to the taxpayers.
With over $29 billion in extra money sloshing around government coffers, one would think that at the very least the politicians would stop crying poor. But that's an overly optimistic expectation, as government in Canada has assumed a sense of entitlement that would make even the hardest Mafia don turn crimson with shame.
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