Robert Asselin is the Senior Vice President of Policy at the Business Council of Canada and has worked in the Office of Finance Minister Bill Warneau's office for years. He knows the ins and outs of putting together a budget, and he knows a thing or two about economics.
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00:01:12.980The budget is out, the reviews are in, and mostly I would say that Justin Trudeau's eighth budget as prime minister, it's not getting rave reviews.
00:01:28.380Hello, my name's Brian Lilly, this is the Full Comment Podcast, and today I want to talk to someone who knows the ins and outs of putting a budget together.
00:01:36.580Robert Asselin is the Senior Vice President of Policy at the Business Council of Canada, but from 2015 until 2017, he also worked in the office of Finance Minister Bill Warneau, helping the Trudeau government bring out their first couple of budgets.
00:01:51.800Prior to that, he'd worked as an advisor to the prime minister during his election campaign.
00:01:57.360He knows the world of business, he knows the world of politics, and he knows an awful lot about economics.
00:02:05.160The budget, I described it as tax and spend, and sometimes that's a phrase that people will throw pejoratively at liberals.
00:02:13.540Oh, they're just tax and spend liberals, but this really was a tax and spend budget.
00:02:19.280Program spending is up $30 billion from last year, or 7% of spending.
00:02:24.820The public debt charges now are equal to the amount we collect in GST, and there's a whole pile of new tax measures in here, not just the capital gains tax, although that is the big one.
00:02:38.380Give us your elevator pitch summary of the budget.
00:02:45.140So, Brian, I would agree with your characterization of tax and spend budget.
00:02:49.360I think it's objectively true when you look at the numbers.
00:02:53.200You're looking at around $57 billion of new spending over five years.
00:02:58.440They're raising revenue by about $20 billion, a bit more than that, over five, mostly, as you say, with the capital gains inclusion rate provision going from 50% to 66%.
00:03:12.860They have a better economic outlook than they had in the fall statement that explained a bit of a bump.
00:03:22.840And then they're pushing a lot of past committed spending to future years, so that allows them to show better balance number, better deficit number, if you want.
00:03:37.940So, overall, I would say at a moment where the economy is very fragile, stagnating, putting a tax on investment the way they did, I wouldn't characterize it as a good move.
00:03:50.680And on the spending side, as I said, I think it's significant spending.
00:03:55.340The part that bothers me is that I've covered more federal budgets than I can remember at this point, including the year that we had, too, shortly after 9-11.
00:04:09.240And I understand that when we see these projections that governments make, especially in five years out, you know, you take them with a grain of salt.
00:04:18.520They're not going to meet, you know, five years from now we project we will generate this much revenue or we will spend this much.
00:04:26.580The numbers will be incredibly different.
00:04:28.080But this government, over the last several years, especially under Finance Minister Christy Freeland, the projections are like throwing darts at a board.
00:04:39.360From the budget to the fall economic statement and from the fall economic statement to the next budget, there's always dramatic increases in spending.
00:04:49.220One year it was $20 billion between the budget and the fall economic statement.
00:04:53.660This time it's $30 billion from the last budget to this one.
00:04:57.680Do you feel like the government has control on spending anymore or is this spending just going out the door for political reasons?
00:05:16.800No, I think this is a government that admittedly likes to spend, believe in big government, believes that the government can solve a lot of problems that are not even in its own jurisdiction, that are mostly in provincial jurisdiction.
00:05:34.840And politically, I think this is a government that sees itself capturing the left generally in the electorate.
00:05:48.340And so doubling down on social programs, on spending at a time where interest rates are rising really fast, at a time where the economy is shaky, I would say a tax and spend budget is not how I would have done it personally.
00:06:08.720Well, the prime minister has described anybody that calls for spending and be reined in as calling for austerity, meaning cuts.
00:06:17.440As someone that's worked with liberal governments in putting together budgets, you know, do you necessarily have to cut to control spending?
00:06:29.340If spending is going up by $30 billion a year, I'm sure there's ways to control that without just cutting frontline services.
00:06:37.240But, you know, the prime minister would make it sound like you're going to put granny on an ice floe if you suggest that spending should be controlled.
00:06:43.340The problem that we have is the imbalance between revenues and expenditures.
00:06:49.840So I think a government can justify more expenses generally if it's willing to say to the electorate, to Canadians, that they will pay more taxes.
00:07:00.280But obviously, politicians never do that.
00:09:03.820And that number has grown over the past several years.
00:09:08.840And I was expecting it to surpass health this year, which it did, by some $2 billion.
00:09:14.620But I was shocked when I saw, going through the numbers, that the GST, the entirety of the GST that we collect on everything across the country is equal to the public debt charge now.
00:09:28.000So every 5% that you or I would charge to someone for a service or that we pay for a good that the government collects is just going for that public debt charge.
00:09:39.640And I think that, I know we can't get rid of the debt tomorrow, but to me that's an example of why being fiscally prudent and not running up huge deficits is so important.
00:09:52.940That is now squeezing out other spending.
00:09:55.940I did the math and the national child care program costs $6.6 billion.
00:10:00.800We could fund that eight times over with what we're paying for this public debt charge now on an annual basis.
00:10:07.860And as you said, because of interest rates, that's just going up.
00:10:12.000Yeah, I think this is fundamental, Ryan, for people to understand is the amount of revenues you allocate to debt charges or interest payments on your debt.
00:10:23.280And so now we're over 10% of, let's say, 10 cents over every dollar we send to just pay the interest payments on our debt.
00:10:34.000As this number grows, I think it's easy to understand for people that we have less for everything else, as you just said.
00:10:41.780And so as this 10 cent on the dollar goes even further, 11, 12, 13, 14, you know, you just constrain yourself on all the good stuff you want to do as a government.
00:10:55.800Independently of whether you're a conservative government or a liberal government, you're going to be much more constrained to spend either on defense, on social programs, on health care transfers, on child care.
00:11:07.680And this is what people need to understand is that, you know, the government uses this debt to GDP ratio with the best of the G7.
00:11:17.280There's no problem. Don't worry about this stuff.
00:11:21.600And these metrics, in my opinion, are really key.
00:11:25.580It's really the debt servicing charge that people have to look at.
00:11:28.820And as they grow, it considerably restrains a government to do everything it needs to do going forward.
00:11:36.420But isn't going over 10% one of the warning signs?
00:11:41.660Actually, I had the great privilege of working on a paper with David Dodge, the former Bank of Canada governor and deputy minister at finance when, in the 90s, when we hit the fiscal wall.
00:12:05.640And as a result of it, we have a much better situation now.
00:12:09.140But in that paper, we basically said that once you go over 10% of debt servicing costs, when your revenues exceed 10%, you're going to get into another zone.
00:12:24.340You know, it's not like fatal from one day to another.
00:12:27.440However, it doesn't mean you're going to get downgraded necessarily, but it's kind of a slippery slope where you embark on something that is more risky going forward.
00:12:38.160I covered the Ontario budget recently, and as I've said loud and clear to Finance Minister Peter Bethlin-Falvey, they're spending too much as well, in my view.
00:12:49.800You get a sense of where I'm coming from fiscally.
00:12:59.900They were in line with what we could afford, with what we were spending.
00:13:02.640The debt bothers me, but one thing I will say is that through refinancing of Ontario's debt during COVID, when bonds were so low, and they took 30-year bonds at 1.4%, they've been able to shrink that percentage of what is going towards public debt charges, and it's now below 7% again.
00:13:24.460So instead of climbing, it's going down, even though they are spending more, and we just don't seem to have that in Ottawa.
00:13:31.180Robert, I went back to the last budget of the Harper government and compared it to yesterday's budget just to see, okay, how much have we increased spending by?
00:13:44.960And when you look at the total spend, program spending and public debt charges, we've increased spending by $247 billion.
00:13:54.720So it was $288 billion in the last Harper budget.
00:14:29.140I think you just summarized it very well.
00:14:32.420Part of it is due to inflation, but it's not entirely the cause of it.
00:14:38.820Obviously, there's a lot of expansion of introduction of a lot of new programs, a public service that has grown a lot, I think by 40% since 2015.
00:14:50.660Now, you can say, you know, a bigger government requires more people to be employed and render services.
00:15:00.620But, you know, again, you can, and the government has increased the revenue side as percentage of GDP.
00:15:10.800We've seen it again yesterday with the capital gain inclusion rate.
00:15:14.700So that's a choice I think the government has to justify in front of Canadians, you know.
00:15:20.780And at the end, I think Canadians have to be conscious that a bigger government requires, you know, more revenues, meaning higher taxes.
00:15:34.200And to me, this is where we're going, for sure.
00:15:37.020Yesterday was almost maybe just the beginning.
00:15:40.060If you want to run a government to the size that they're running right now, with all the programs they are introducing at every budget every year, they're going to need much more revenue.
00:15:49.380And it can't just be a function of economic growth.
00:15:51.500They're going to have to raise taxes significantly going forward.
00:15:56.540And that's the choice that Canadians will have to make.
00:15:59.180Personally, I think it has grown too fast in the last, maybe post-pandemic, the last three, four, or five budgets.
00:16:10.600But, again, that's for people to decide what kind of government, how big the government should be, especially at the federal level.
00:16:17.940And I think your point is really important, is that we live in a federation.
00:16:23.160We pay taxes to two levels of government.
00:16:27.940And you need to think about it as an aggregate.
00:16:32.300So, if the Ontario government gets more indebted, and the Canadian government, the federal government gets more indebted, there's only one taxpayer at the end that will pick up the bill.
00:16:43.620Well, you mentioned that, you know, these programs are going in.
00:16:47.120But, and the Prime Minister keeps mentioning that.
00:16:49.640But when I look at it, you know, something like childcare is the most developed of the additions that they've brought in over the last little while.
00:16:58.460I think it's up to about $6 billion and growing.
00:17:23.940And you mentioned a 40% increase in the size of the civil service.
00:17:30.800And I think as my colleague, John Iveson at National Post has documented, it's well over a 30% increase in the use of consultants like McKinsey or whoever.
00:17:40.640However, this is, you're saying that we need to, we'll have to raise taxes.
00:17:49.680I agree that might be one issue, but I'm also thinking program review.
00:17:54.720Something like what David Dodge did or Don Drummond did.
00:17:57.660Both of them have been very critical of the current government.
00:18:02.200They seem to, I remember covering John Manley when he was the finance minister and no one sold the idea of cutting some things in government better than Manley.
00:18:13.600He would always say, we're moving money from low priorities to high priorities.
00:18:18.560And unfortunately, it seems that once a dollar is being spent now, it remains a government priority, whether it's still serving a purpose or not.
00:18:27.120So they're not doing a program review.
00:18:29.120They're not saying, does it still make sense to be offering this?
00:18:32.360They just add on and then don't look at how else they're spending our money.
00:19:34.620There are stuff that is in the fiscal framework, frankly, that hasn't been looked at for decades.
00:19:44.220Agencies, commissions, all kinds of structures that we have inside departments, outside departments, that have been there for a long time.
00:19:56.640But at the end, it's not cutting for cutting, but you have to just ask yourself, is it doing what we, what this, is this structure or this program or this mission doing what it's supposed to do?
00:20:14.280In my opinion, Brian, this should be an ongoing program review for any government, anytime, all the time, because it's kind of important that when you spend public money, you do it the most efficiently and the most effectively possible.
00:20:33.020Well, you said families do that with their budget.
00:20:35.620You know, with all these online subscriptions that we all have now, and you can sign up for a service on your phone or on your laptop, and you just say, oh, yeah, I'll do that.
00:20:46.040And you get a good introductory rate, and then they hit you with a $300 bill if you don't cancel the auto renew.
00:20:53.720I make it a habit now of going through my bank statement and saying, okay, I'm paying for this on a monthly basis.
00:21:02.580Um, you know, and I think that's good for anybody to do, but I also think it's good for government to do.
00:21:09.020As I said, just because you did something once upon a time doesn't mean it, it still makes sense.
00:21:14.080Uh, one of my early stories, um, when I joined the sun, uh, in 2010 was to, uh, to look at the cars and drivers and who had them.
00:21:24.420Um, because, uh, I remember talking to someone on Bay Street and I said, nobody on Bay Street has a car, their own dedicated chauffeur and car anymore.
00:21:32.800Um, you're expected to drive yourself or if you need a car for a special occasion, you hire a service.
00:21:38.320Now people would just hire Uber and I went through the list and it would shock people how many civil servants you've never heard of departments and agencies you didn't know exist.
00:21:50.000The guy at the top or the woman at the top has a dedicated car and driver.
00:21:55.160Um, how and why do you justify that in 2024 when, you know, allies like Britain, I think it's a three cabinet ministers have a car and driver.
00:22:08.940I think, um, structurally, there's a lot of stuff that we've been doing again for many times, many years, uh, that needs to be re-examined and, uh, you know, priorities change.
00:22:21.280Uh, we live in a very dangerous world now, uh, maybe in the nineties, defense wasn't seen as a priority for our country.
00:22:28.940Now, obviously with everything that's going on, I think Canadians are rethinking that, uh, and defense is used.
00:22:36.140It's usually expensive and so you cannot have it both ways.
00:22:40.260You cannot, uh, just continue to spend everywhere and, uh, continue with the same, uh, this, uh, and leave kind of the ongoing spending unchecked.
00:22:54.740You need to reallocate, you need to put resource where your priorities are and I'm just not seeing this at the federal level.
00:23:01.940Uh, Robert, we have to take a break now, but when we come back, I do want to ask you about, um, the tax side of this.
00:23:08.180We've talked a lot about the spending.
00:23:09.880Let's talk about the tax side and what it's going to do to productivity.
00:23:13.780Uh, two of the founders of Shopify, a Canadian tech juggernaut came out very critical of what this is going to do in the tech space.
00:23:21.980We'll talk about that when we come back.
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00:24:45.500If you listen to the government, the changes to the capital gains tax inclusion rate will only hit the 0.13% top of the income ladder.
00:24:59.680They're trying to make this out to be the guy in the monopoly game with the monocle and top hat, and nobody else is going to be hurt by it.
00:25:08.040Entrepreneurs, they have something different to say.
00:25:10.400The CEO and the president of Shopify both slamming this change to the capital gains tax rules, small businesses, big businesses, all saying this is the wrong way to go.
00:25:20.020Robert, you said that this is a tax that's not going to help with productivity.
00:25:24.400That's an issue that we've got or an area where we've got huge issues right now.
00:25:29.460Well, why do you see this as the wrong prescription for increasing tax revenues?
00:25:35.040Because you said earlier, you're not against increasing tax revenues and bringing them in line with where you want to spend.
00:25:40.900But you said this isn't the right way.
00:25:42.640Well, just on the last point you just made, the easiest thing that government could have done is just do less spending.
00:25:51.220And so you don't have to enter into this discussion on higher taxes.
00:25:55.260That would have been the most efficient way to do this.
00:25:58.280But on the capital gains inclusion rate change from yesterday, at a moment where our main problem structurally is a lack of business investments that is driving down productivity, you don't want to, you know, bringing in a tax on investment, which is essentially what they did yesterday.
00:26:21.740Just on the psychology of people wanting to take risk, wanting to invest for their own benefit, essentially, of course, it is something that I think is very detrimental.
00:26:39.460You almost kind of see it, you can conceive of it as a tax on success.
00:26:44.480People who try to make money, they take chances, they invest, they start companies, and even for people who have, through their lives, accumulate a little bit of wealth, you know, a cottage or something that they consider as an important investment for their retirement, they're going to be touched by this.
00:27:12.340And so I just think timing-wise, it couldn't have been a worse moment.
00:27:18.160Again, at a moment where our business investment climate is not ideal, where there's a lack of confidence for people to form capital in our economy, making capital even more expensive, I think it's not a good idea.
00:27:32.240I heard from one business owner who is in the manufacturing sector.
00:27:37.640He has a couple of plants in the GTA, he has plants in the United States and elsewhere, in total about 600 odd employees, 250 I believe are in the Toronto area.
00:27:51.820He said, at this point, if he's going to expand, this makes it less likely for him to expand inside Canada.
00:28:03.500And it's a story I've heard from several small and medium-sized manufacturers.
00:28:08.060These are people who, yeah, admittedly, they're well off, but the money's tied up in their company, which is employing hundreds of people with good-paying jobs.
00:28:16.240And now they just say, well, I'd be better off putting that in North Carolina or Michigan or Texas or wherever, because if they grow that business and it's a success and they sell it, they're going to get dinged with a lot more taxes.
00:28:33.880Because they're already paying income taxes on any profits, and then they have to pay a capital gains tax on top of that.
00:28:40.940I don't think people realize that part, that you're still facing double taxation on this.
00:28:48.160Yeah, it's essentially what capital gains is when you think of it.
00:28:50.880I think it's very damaging, to be honest, also to engage in this kind of class war, populism angle for politicians.
00:29:03.500You know, capital is required in the economy.
00:29:14.000It puts food on people's table and families' table.
00:29:16.940I don't think we should be, you know, as Canadians, envious of people who are successful.
00:29:25.420There are a lot of people who started with nothing, build up great big corporations that, again, that employ hundreds of Canadians, thousands of Canadians.
00:30:37.100If you put always taxes on success and on capital, then I think we're going to have less of it, you know.
00:30:45.220Harvey Finkelstein from Shopify asked on X, what are we doing, Canada, in response to this change?
00:30:52.980And Toby Lucky, who was the CEO, said, message from a friend, Canada has heard rumors about innovation and is determined to leave no stone unturned in deterring it.
00:31:06.460He sees this as killing off innovation and killing off a move to a more productive economy.
00:31:16.360You mentioned that capital is expensive and it's needed.
00:31:18.860You know, the prime minister and his whole government have gone around talking about the need to make sure that there's capital available for building apartments.
00:31:28.380They want to encourage people to build more apartments, build more homes because of the housing crisis.
00:31:33.820All of this makes it less likely for the private sector to get involved in doing that.
00:31:39.440You make a profit, you're going to be punished more for making a profit, even if it's on affordable homes.
00:31:49.960For everything the government is trying to do, energy transition, housing, building a better, a greater supply of houses,
00:31:59.260you need a private sector that is willing to invest, that is willing to help you solve this problem, this challenge for our country.
00:32:07.360And if you basically take the attitude that I'm the government, I can do it on my own, I don't need the private sector, well, it's just going to be, you're not going to be successful.
00:32:20.260And our economy will suffer as a result of it.
00:32:23.160So it's the attitude vis-a-vis business that it's really important.
00:32:27.780I think also this like business bashing movement that we're seeing right now that being successful is bad, being a big business is bad.
00:32:36.860Well, it turns out that it's these very businesses that, as I said, provide good wages to employees, that provide the shareholders good returns on their investments.
00:32:54.620And at the end of the day, you know, we want better living standards.
00:32:58.220And for that, we need a dynamic economy.
00:33:01.320I really want to point out this aspect.
00:33:04.640Economic dynamism is really important.
00:33:09.400Because they are taking risks, they are taking chances, they have innovators who fail once, twice, sometimes before building amazing companies.
00:33:19.140If you don't develop this culture here in Canada, or if you downplay it, I should say,
00:33:25.100you can't have an economy that resides just in consumption, real estate, and government spending.
00:33:32.760You need an economy that resides on economic dynamism, entrepreneurial spirit, innovators.
00:33:38.740And I feel with this tax move, we're just sending a really bad signal.
00:33:43.520Well, the balanced budget period that the Gretchen Liberals brought in, followed by tax cuts, not only did it help spur some of what you're talking about there, but government revenues went up despite tax cuts.
00:34:30.600In terms of what they could have done, what could they be doing to spur productivity?
00:34:37.680Actually, the deputy governor of the Bank of Canada gave a very stark warning about where we're at in terms of productivity just a few weeks ago.
00:34:47.000And I'm not sure that in the middle of the CEO bashing you were talking about that anyone was listening.
00:34:54.020Actually, just before, I want to point out that the CEO bashing going on is a cross-partisan activity right now.
00:35:00.520I don't know if you saw Mirko Bibich appear, the CEO of Belcan at Angel Prizes.
00:35:07.220He was berated by MPs from every single party.
00:35:11.920And it wasn't even on the topic that they were supposedly there to discuss.
00:35:15.260They just wanted to beat him up, same as they did to Gail and Weston a little while ago.
00:35:19.580CEOs get about as much respect in Ottawa from all parties as a convicted murderer these days.
00:35:25.780Being a CEO, creating jobs, creating, you know, for a company like Bell, pretty much if you have a pension or an RRSP, you're holding Bell stock and their dividends are helping pay for your retirement.
00:35:42.740And it's across party lines, which I think is very dangerous.
00:35:46.600You know, it's not just the NDP or a flank of the Liberal Party now.
00:35:50.940It's the Conservatives and all Liberals as well.
00:35:53.120Yeah, that's a very unfortunate development.
00:35:57.340Again, everybody wants to be a workers' party and I totally understand how important it is for the middle class to succeed.
00:36:06.020But the reality is, if we don't have successful companies, if we don't have scaled companies, you know, companies to a certain size, you're just not going to see the wages and the living standards that we've enjoyed over the last 50 years in Canada.
00:36:27.160You actually need these big companies to succeed so that employees are equally successful.
00:36:39.420It's a race to success and taking more chances, competing against companies globally, not just in Canada.
00:36:52.920So for that to happen, you need successful multinationals that are established in Canada.
00:37:01.680What are the steps the government could have taken?
00:37:04.280I know that you've been looking at this along with people like Sean Spear from The Hub.
00:37:08.920You've written paper with David Dodge.
00:37:11.840You've been taking a deep, deep dive at this.
00:37:14.060What are some of the policies that they could have looked at?
00:37:16.480So first and foremost, it's about creating a macroeconomic environment that is conducive of people wanting to invest.
00:37:27.140So just as a very concrete example, if it takes 15 years for a mining company or an oil and gas company to get a permit to exploit a new pipeline or a new mine,
00:37:38.640obviously people will make different decisions and investors might turn to other countries that have a more nimble, agile, regulatory process.
00:37:50.600And again, I'm not saying that there should not be any environmental assessment process or stuff like that.
00:37:56.920But is it reasonable that in a country like Canada, it would take 15 years or more than 10 years to get a big project approved?
00:38:05.080That's something we could fix without money that would give us a lot in terms of confidence of people to invest in our country.
00:38:16.260And then, you know, other than obviously the macroeconomic environment, and by the way, the fiscal situation is really important
00:38:24.580because if you keep running structural deficit down the road with investors and people who make business decisions,
00:38:31.560including CEOs will conclude that taxes will eventually need to go up.
00:38:36.280And that's not a good thing when you're trying to make money to see an environment where you're going to have higher taxes down the road.
00:38:45.520And so that's a big break to people thinking about future investments.
00:38:51.680And on a productivity side, what drives it really at the end, Brian, and you see it in countries like the United States, is innovation.
00:39:01.160Innovation is something we're not good at.
00:39:03.440We've been very complacent, I guess, depending on our U.S. trading partner, depending on our natural resources,
00:39:11.940which are a great gift for Canada, we have not pushed enough on innovation.
00:39:18.860And as a result, our productivity numbers have been very, very weak.
00:39:25.260And so we have to do better at innovation.
00:39:30.620We have to invest more in R&D, public R&D, private R&D, scale our business.
00:40:05.760Yeah, it's, you know, all of the companies that we have that are big once started out small.
00:40:12.600And, you know, they only get big because of success.
00:40:16.740And if you're going to tax them to success, that won't work.
00:40:24.060One of my favorite lines about taxation is Winston Churchill saying that taxing your way to prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself up by the handle.
00:40:33.660Well, I want to thank you for your time today, Robert.
00:40:38.640It's been an interesting conversation.
00:40:40.580And it's unfortunately one that we'll likely have.
00:40:43.840Again, there's at least one more budget from the government.
00:40:46.320And they seem more determined to, as you say, play a populist thing.
00:40:50.760You know, since Donald Trump came along, we've acted as if populism is only on one side.