Tax Is Not a Four-Letter Word: A Different Take on Taxes in Canada

Taxes connect us to one another, to the common good, and to the future. This is a book about taxes: who pays what and who gets what. More than that, it’s about the role of government, about citizenship and our collective well-being, about the Canada we want. The contributors, leading Canadian practitioners and scholars, explore how taxes have become a political “no-go zone” and how changes in taxation are changing Canada. They challenge the view that any tax is a bad tax and provide broad directions for fairer and smarter approaches.

This is a book that will be of interest to anyone concerned with public policy and public affairs, economics, and political science and to anyone interested in challenging the conventional wisdom that lower taxes and smaller government are the cures to what ails us.

Introduction | Tax is Not a Four-Letter Word

Alex Himelfarb, Jordan Himelfarb

A call to action for why we need to have an unapologetic and well-informed discussion about taxes and the services they provide.
1

The Economic Consequences of Taxing (and Spending)

Jim Stanford

Jim Stanford, economist with the CAW, gives us a broad overview of where we are today, taking us through the mix of taxes we pay and how these are tied to the spending our governments undertake on our behalf.

2

Taxes and Transfers in Canada: The Federal Dimension

Robin Boadway

Queen’s economist Robin Boadway discusses some of the particular challenges facing a federation such as ours. He warns of the risks caused by the erosion of the federal share of tax revenue, and proposes some fixes to ensure greater resiliency, solidarity, and social citizenship.

3

Taxes and Public Services

Hugh Mackenzie

Hugh Mackenzie, a leader in Canadian tax policy describes the ways in which talk of taxes has become divorced from the services they buy, and the distorting effect this has on our politics and policy.
4

Benefits from Public Services

Hugh Mackenzie

Hugh Mackenzie, a leader in Canadian tax policy focuses on the value of what our taxes buy, and what we lose when they are cut. He even quantifies some of those benefits to help us see the extent to which public services are the last great bargain.

5

Canadian Public Opinion on Taxes

Frank Graves

Frank Graves, President and owner of EKOS Research, takes us through some historical and recent data to show that, yes, Canadians’ attitudes are changing in the directions we might have predicted, but those attitudes are complex and suggest an opening for the kind of debate that our political leaders have, until now, been reluctant to initiate.

6

Taxation and the Neo-Liberal Counter-Revolution: The Canadian Case

Matt Fodor

Matt Fodor, a York University political scientist, tracks how the neo-liberal (or neo-conservative, depending on your tastes) counter-revolution led by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK has played out even if more subtly in Canada, and how it has reshaped policy and thinking on taxes, markets, and the role of government. 

7

A Brief Potted History of Ottawa's Tax Cut Mania

Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont

Policy experts Eugene Lang and Philip DeMont know government from the inside and out, and show how these ideological changes manifested themselves in Canadian economic policies over the last three decades. They put into a historical and international perspective just how and how much—or little—we tax, and they allude to some of the consequences of our tax decisions.

8

Tax Cuts and Other Cheap Parlour Tricks

Trish Hennessy

Former journalist, Trish Hennessy, who now heads up the Ontario Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), provides a personal take on how the political rhetoric that attended these shifts played out and reshaped the psychology of taxes in Canada.

9

Toward a Fair Canadian Tax System

Marc Lee and Igilka Ivanova

Marc Lee and Iglika Ivanova of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in BC provide a comprehensive view of what a truly progressive tax system might look like, making concrete recommendations on the right mix of taxes. Their comprehensive approach tries to balance economic, social, and environmental objectives.

10

Carbon Taxes: Can a Good Policy Become Good Politics

Stéphane Dion with Mike McNair as co-author

Stéphane Dion, former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, former minister of the environment and current Liberal MP, makes the case for a revenue-neutral and progressive carbon tax as key to addressing climate change, and asks what it will take to make these taxes politically saleable.

11

How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference: The Case of Financial Transaction Taxes

Toby Sanger

Toby Sanger, senior economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, makes the case for financial transaction taxes, already taken up by a number of jurisdictions, not only as a source of substantial revenue but also as an important economic measure to reduce speculation and shift emphasis to the “real economy” that produces goods and services. Recognizing some of the challenges for Canada of going it alone, he also explores more modest ways to tap into the profits of our financial institutions. 

12

We Need to Simplify and Re-focus the Tax System

Scott Clark

Scott Clarke, former deputy minister of finance, describes how a simpler, economically smarter tax system would look. He highlights the importance of closing tax loopholes and treating “tax expenditures”—the growing and costly list of credits provided to individuals and corporations through the tax system—with the same rigour with which we treat all spending. He also provides an extended discussion of the GST/HST, raising important questions about the recent and significant cuts.

13

Canada's Conservative Ideological Infrastructure: Brewing a Cup o' Cappuccino Conservatism

Paul Saurette and Shane Gunster

Paul Saurette of the University of Ottawa and Shane Gunster of Simon Fraser examine the infrastructure conservatives built, the language they adopted, and the messages they use, and conclude that progressives have much to learn. The authors argue that we must understand just how the conservatives have succeeded, what their various narratives are, and why they work, and they offer a number of recommendations that could be just what’s needed to begin to rebalance the conversation and spark a real, two-sided debate on taxes in Canada.

Conclusion

Alex Himelfarb

The Conclusion pulls the diverse threads of the book together, concluding with prospects and options for the future. It focuses on how we might change the conversation about taxes.