What Needs to be Done

The challenge is to achieve a social compact among Canadians in which all contribute as they are able through the tax system and the Federal Government makes fiscal decisions that meet the needs of the Canadian people and foster aggregate demand in the economy.

 

This requires:

1) Defeating the “Greek disease” of tax avoidance by the wealthy and the corporations through a system of fair taxation;  this calls for acting on the recommendations of the Carter Commission half a century after the report was released;

2) Taking up the original legislated promise by the Federal Government to pay half the cost of Medicare across the country, thus freeing up large fiscal space for Provincial Governments to meet the needs of their people;  the freed-up funds should be used first of all to fund colleges and universities properly;

3) Enhancing Medicare by including both dental care and Pharmacare within the arrangements in every jurisdiction and acting wisely in regard to the Boomers to ensure that investments are made with an eye to the future (after the demographic bulge has passed);

4) “Nationalizing” the Bank of Canada to serve the purposes of the country—maintaining price stability is quite inadequate as an objective and can become vicious in its impact—with the assumption of student loans as a first action to end the present counter-productive system run by the chartered banks;  this will free graduates to establish their own households and enhance aggregate demand;

5) Empowering the Canada Mortgage and Housing Commission to meet the social housing needs of the country and foster a sustainable housing policy for the country;

6) Raising minimum wages to at least the poverty line, thereby reducing the numbers of the working poor and increasing aggregate demand in the economy;

7) Re-establishing the original Unemployment Insurance system so that it meets the needs of all Canadians who find themselves between jobs;

8) Establishing a guaranteed income for Canadians like the one known as Mincome in Manitoba forty years ago, which (among other things) enabled young people to complete their high school education and mothers to achieve their own maternal leave before such a system had been created;

9) Replacing the GST/HST with progressive personal and corporate income taxes that reflect capacity to pay, in the process cleaning up the tax code of the country to get rid of the tax breaks that now litter the system and make administration of it confusing and difficult;

10) Recognizing consumer demand as basic to the prosperity of the country and abandoning all of the tax incentives to investment which represent misguided attempts to “push the rope” of business action;

11) Launching a national program to achieve sustainability at a time when the need for social resilience is increasingly recognized in the face of climate change;  and

12) Freeing Canadians, as the generous people they are, to focus their charity on other objects than food banks to keep their neighbours from starving to death!