True Patriot Love - September 25, 2025


Canada’s 2024 Revenues： Record Highs, Hidden Limits, and the Spending Problem Ahead


Episode Stats

Length

26 minutes

Words per Minute

139.43913

Word Count

3,759

Sentence Count

311

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.480 We've crunched the numbers from the 2024 budget, and they don't lie.
00:00:05.120 Canada doesn't have a revenue problem, but we sure have a spending problem.
00:00:09.920 Prime Minister Carney promised us a budget, and we're ready to see it and understand it.
00:00:14.480 But when is it coming?
00:00:16.000 After a lengthy prorogation, Parliament heads back into session on Monday, September 15th.
00:00:22.320 And we can't wait.
00:00:23.840 Stay tuned to True Patriot Love for a deep dive analysis into the 2025 budget.
00:00:30.240 In the meantime, we've combed through the 2024 annual report and financials
00:00:34.960 to bring you a budget analysis you won't find anywhere else.
00:00:40.240 Welcome, everyone. Today, we're going to go through the 2024 federal annual report and analyze it
00:00:57.680 and ask some key questions.
00:01:00.000 We have a critical time coming up in our country, and our 2025 budget is going to be
00:01:07.200 very important for our future and for Canada in general.
00:01:12.560 So today, we're going to jump right in.
00:01:14.720 I'm going to take off my coat.
00:01:15.760 We're going to go down and we're going to break down some of the revenues.
00:01:18.960 So people ask me all the time, where do Canada's revenues come from?
00:01:24.480 Well, let's go to the next slide, Nick.
00:01:27.040 And here we go.
00:01:28.800 So, of course, we all know the biggest component of our revenue come from taxes.
00:01:35.280 Okay, taxes, you know, $217 billion come from personal tax.
00:01:40.960 So that's, you know, every April we're sitting down and we actually do our personal income tax
00:01:47.040 and we either get money back or we pay the additional.
00:01:50.640 When we get our checks, it's the tax we pay on our checks.
00:01:53.440 So $217 billion come from personal income tax.
00:01:59.120 Then corporate tax.
00:02:00.880 So the companies that grow and thrive in Canada, of course, pay income tax.
00:02:05.920 And that equates to about $82.5 billion.
00:02:10.000 Big portion of the pie.
00:02:12.400 And you know what?
00:02:12.960 That's been growing quite a bit over the last few years.
00:02:17.040 Non-resident tax or revenue.
00:02:19.440 That makes up about $12.5 billion.
00:02:23.760 GST, $51.4 billion.
00:02:26.160 A lot bigger number than even I thought from a revenue perspective for the government.
00:02:31.600 Energy tax, $5.6 billion.
00:02:34.160 That's been pretty constant over the last 10 years and remains so.
00:02:38.720 And then, of course, customs import duties.
00:02:44.160 I thought that would be a little higher, but it's also $5.6 billion.
00:02:47.920 Custom import duties make up less than I thought.
00:02:51.520 Other excise tax, about $6.8 billion.
00:02:54.640 And then, of course, employment insurance premiums.
00:02:58.720 That is a big number, but that actually pretty much covers off
00:03:03.360 what our unemployment in the country is right now.
00:03:06.080 So they kind of net each other.
00:03:08.320 And we'll talk about that more when we get into the expense analysis portion of our podcast.
00:03:13.920 Which are the podcasts coming up over the next few podcasts.
00:03:18.560 Other revenue, this is kind of all the fees that government charges,
00:03:22.880 whether it be for passports, whether it be for rentals or whatever.
00:03:26.880 We'll go through that.
00:03:27.920 It also has interest in a foreign exchange in it.
00:03:31.040 And then, of course, the carbon tax or the pollution pricing proceeds, which is my favorite.
00:03:37.680 It's always hard to say.
00:03:38.720 Say it three times.
00:03:39.760 It's a tongue twister.
00:03:41.840 That's a big number.
00:03:42.880 And that's actually 10.5.
00:03:45.360 You'll see when we do the expense analysis, a lot of that gets rebated back to us.
00:03:50.080 So, you know, the Government of Canada's revenues for 2024 are a whopping $459.5 billion.
00:04:02.320 A really good revenue number.
00:04:03.600 And now what we're going to do is we're going to go in and we're going to talk a little about
00:04:06.480 each of the sections we just outlined.
00:04:08.800 And we're going to tell you why probably there's a little bit of growth potential, but not a lot.
00:04:15.680 So why don't we go to the next slide?
00:04:18.560 You know, when I looked into it, I was very curious to see how we had done in our revenue to GDP
00:04:29.440 ratio over the last couple of years.
00:04:32.160 And I found this chart in the annual report for 2024.
00:04:35.600 It's a good chart, but, you know, what it shows is kind of a smile, as you can see,
00:04:41.040 which is not a particularly great thing because ideally what you want to see is you want to see
00:04:46.240 GDP grow and you want to see government revenue kind of stabilize.
00:04:51.120 So ideally you'd like to see it go down.
00:04:55.120 So on the right side of that chart, you'd like to see it tail off.
00:04:59.120 Unfortunately, we're growing back quite a bit.
00:05:02.560 So not the greatest chart for Canada is a growth potential.
00:05:08.960 And we're going to talk about GDP on shows upcoming and try to figure out why the GDP is
00:05:15.600 not growing and why we're not as productive.
00:05:17.520 But I'm going to leave it and put that aside for now because I think that's a whole other couple
00:05:22.000 shows that we can jump into and I think we'll enjoy.
00:05:26.720 So as we go to the next slide, you're going to see we're going to delve into personal income tax.
00:05:33.280 So as I mentioned before, personal income tax is $217 billion for 2024, right?
00:05:43.280 So up 32% from 2019.
00:05:48.400 So when I looked at that, I thought, wow, that's that's really crazy.
00:05:51.840 Why would why would we see such a healthy increase in in taxes year on year?
00:06:01.040 So I delved into it.
00:06:05.280 Pardon me.
00:06:05.760 And here's what I found.
00:06:08.400 So Canadians actively paying income tax in 2024 are about 22.8 million.
00:06:16.880 So these are the people kind of between the ages of 24 and 65.
00:06:22.560 They're active taxpayers.
00:06:24.240 Um, and we, we kind of remove from that number, uh, people who are on welfare, uh, we take out
00:06:32.640 children and we come up with that number.
00:06:34.960 Then there's seniors and they make up about almost 8 million, 7.65 million, a very healthy number
00:06:42.560 and a growing number, uh, as we all know, and we talk about it quite a bit.
00:06:46.880 So now how does that equate to 2019?
00:06:50.240 And the reason I use 2019 as an indicator is because this is before COVID and this is
00:06:57.120 before sort of the world went upside down.
00:06:59.600 So I think it's important to talk about how we get back to 2019 levels where our total deficit
00:07:08.560 for the country was only 14 billion versus 61 billion now in 2024.
00:07:16.800 So, you know, I won't get into the expense side of it, but I'm going to stay on the revenue side.
00:07:22.320 So that means roughly that we have 30 million people who actually are paying income tax in the
00:07:32.240 country at this point.
00:07:34.080 And that equates to per capita, about $7,100 per person.
00:07:40.480 So if you take the 217 billion, divide that by the 30.5 million, you come out with 7,000,
00:07:47.840 which, you know what, that roughly makes sense because our average income per Canadian in 2024 was 65,526.
00:08:00.000 Right. So we get it.
00:08:01.520 So, you know, income tax, 217, 30 million people paying income tax, including seniors,
00:08:08.960 and then basically 7,107 per capita tax paid federally.
00:08:18.160 Now that's not provincial tax, that's just federal tax.
00:08:21.600 And that equates roughly to about 65,000 average income.
00:08:26.560 So it tells a few stories, right?
00:08:29.120 It tells a story of probably a bunch of Canadians or the majority of Canadians making roughly around
00:08:36.640 the average.
00:08:37.680 So, you know, you have lower, you have higher, but, you know, it does really, if you put a
00:08:44.160 chart, a beta chart, and you showed kind of the average, you'd have a bunch of dots
00:08:52.480 that would be all compiled together or a bunch together.
00:08:56.160 So not a great thing because you traditionally want a little bit more dispersion in your income
00:09:02.160 levels.
00:09:02.720 But in Canada, we have a lot of people making very average income.
00:09:06.800 So that kind of is the norm of what we understand.
00:09:10.400 So how does that compare to 2019?
00:09:14.480 Well, as I mentioned, right?
00:09:15.920 So personal income tax since 2019 has gone up by $53 billion, right?
00:09:24.080 And say, okay, well, we immigrated a bunch of people.
00:09:27.360 Yeah.
00:09:27.920 We immigrated a bunch of people.
00:09:29.920 So basically from active taxpayers, let's talk about active taxpayers.
00:09:36.160 We have about a million more active taxpayers in growth from 2019 to 2024.
00:09:43.840 That's about a 4.6% increase from 2019 to 2024.
00:09:51.200 Seniors, however, we've had a bigger growth of 1.15 million increase in number of seniors that
00:10:00.880 have actually gone over the age of 65.
00:10:04.560 So that is a 17.7% growth in seniors in our population demographics.
00:10:12.320 So interesting, right?
00:10:14.720 Because now we're having all those baby boomers shift into that category.
00:10:18.720 We all knew it, you know, boom, bust and echo and all those books that people were reading
00:10:24.000 and writing for years are coming true.
00:10:27.040 We're getting an older population.
00:10:29.520 Our baby boomers are reaching the retirement age.
00:10:33.040 So we're starting to see some of the impacts, right?
00:10:36.000 So our income levels are sort of stabilizing or averaging out.
00:10:42.400 And quite frankly, we're seeing a little bit of growth in our personal income tax.
00:10:50.080 So, you know, over overall, what does that mean for growth?
00:10:55.840 It means we're pretty much at that level.
00:10:58.640 So we're going to stagnate or we're going to come close to what our personal tax rate
00:11:02.640 is unless we increase the personal tax rate.
00:11:05.680 Now, as Canadians, we all know that's pretty difficult, right?
00:11:09.520 We all pay a fairly high tax rate.
00:11:13.680 And quite frankly, I think the burden of the tax rate right now is probably at its maximum.
00:11:20.480 Over the since 2019 to 2024, they slowly increased our tax rate by about 2%.
00:11:33.520 So we go to the next slide, Nick.
00:11:35.360 Let's take a look at corporate.
00:11:37.040 So corporate, as you can see, our corporate revenue went up to $82.5 billion.
00:11:47.600 So a lot of times people say, why are corporations not paying more?
00:11:52.240 Why do we not have more corporate income tax?
00:11:54.800 Let's tax the corporations.
00:11:58.480 Well, this is an interesting stat, and this kind of fell out as I was doing the analysis.
00:12:03.440 In 2019, we had $50.4 billion in corporate taxes and revenue to the federal government.
00:12:14.160 So it went up $32 billion or 64%.
00:12:20.800 So just kind of fathom that for a minute.
00:12:22.560 We went through COVID, right, in 2020, just demolished a bunch of companies.
00:12:29.040 We lost 130,000 companies.
00:12:32.160 And quite frankly, most of the time, I don't know if many people know it, in Canada, we roughly,
00:12:39.360 this is a pretty rough number, but it's kind of a rule of thumb that people use.
00:12:43.440 We roughly have around 100,000 new companies start up a year.
00:12:48.640 So throughout the country, we have roughly 100,000 new companies start up,
00:12:54.240 and we have roughly half closures.
00:12:56.800 So 50,000 close.
00:12:58.400 So the net net on an annual basis usually is around 50,000.
00:13:03.040 So, you know, if you looked at, if you look at between 2019 and 2024,
00:13:11.280 you know, you would have thought we would have had if without COVID,
00:13:14.000 we would have had about 250,000 new net companies,
00:13:17.680 but we only had 130,000 companies.
00:13:20.720 So the good news, I guess, or the news that people need to kind of get in their heads
00:13:26.480 is that we're roughly $246,000 per new company attributed to the growth.
00:13:36.720 So we added a number of new companies.
00:13:39.200 They pay more taxes, right?
00:13:42.800 And quite frankly, I think if you really look at it,
00:13:45.920 and we're going to talk a little bit about other corporate taxes coming up,
00:13:51.760 we're probably at the top end of what corporations can pay in Canada.
00:13:56.240 If we want to keep corporations in Canada,
00:13:58.560 I don't think we can go to the well and keep taxing much more.
00:14:04.000 So that's, that's my analysis of corporate tax.
00:14:08.080 Now, let's go Nick to the next slide.
00:14:10.480 GST, right?
00:14:12.000 We all know what we all hate it.
00:14:13.440 Quite frankly, you know, yesterday I bought a fridge.
00:14:16.640 I hated paying my GST, you know, but I did.
00:14:19.680 And we all pay it every day of our lives.
00:14:23.120 So this is a big nut, right?
00:14:25.440 51.4 billion dollars in 2024, right?
00:14:30.240 Up 13.2 billion from 2019.
00:14:34.240 So we had a growth of roughly 35%, so 35%, right?
00:14:44.480 So if you look, you know, people actively paying GST, you know, take out kids,
00:14:49.520 look at our population in 2024.
00:14:53.200 We're looking at roughly $1,500 per person compared to $1,200 per person.
00:15:00.880 So that's a pretty healthy growth number, you know?
00:15:04.480 So it's gone up as an average of our income.
00:15:07.280 And we see that GST has become a bigger component of our lives as we purchase and buy.
00:15:12.320 So as our purchasing power went up in the economy, it was fine coming through COVID.
00:15:16.880 We spent more money, of course, and therefore the revenue to the government from GST increased.
00:15:22.240 So that's a benefit.
00:15:23.440 Now, that's one we got to be worried about a little bit as we see slumping economies, right?
00:15:28.240 Because as we purchase less, our GST goes down.
00:15:31.280 The ability of the government to actually pull that off, you know,
00:15:34.960 it becomes less likely.
00:15:37.680 So do we see that number going up?
00:15:40.160 I think we've, again, hit the apex, the top of this number.
00:15:43.920 So I think this is the end of growth in this number.
00:15:50.080 I hope we see a little bit of a growth because I hope we keep growing.
00:15:53.360 But right now, this is a pretty big number for the number of people in our ecosystem of Canada.
00:16:01.600 So as we go through, let's go to the next one, Nick.
00:16:06.320 So now we hit a bunch of them, which are really my favorites.
00:16:10.000 And we can go through them one by one.
00:16:12.240 But and then I'm going to dissect some of them because I think we need to
00:16:16.320 really get a feel for the smaller revenue items that the federal government takes in.
00:16:23.440 So non-resident, that makes up roughly 12.5 billion dollars.
00:16:35.760 It's up 3.1 billion.
00:16:39.120 I thought this would be a little higher.
00:16:40.160 I was actually shocked at how low this was.
00:16:44.160 So this, even though it saw an increase of 33 percent, based on all the immigration,
00:16:50.320 all the new people, all the businesses that I see starting up from foreign companies,
00:16:55.520 it still remains at a fairly low number.
00:16:58.320 I don't know why we're going to dig into this and ask a few more questions,
00:17:01.840 but that's the number that was posted in the annual report.
00:17:06.320 The next one, this is one we all know.
00:17:09.120 We all pump gas.
00:17:10.320 You know, we get diesel.
00:17:11.600 We fly.
00:17:12.240 So we use aviation fuel.
00:17:14.320 The next one is energy tax.
00:17:16.880 5.6.
00:17:17.760 It's a very stable number.
00:17:19.120 It goes up and down a couple hundred million a year.
00:17:21.920 But that one, in essence, will stay the same.
00:17:24.640 Probably we're not looking for too much growth up or down on this line item in the annual budget
00:17:32.720 going forward.
00:17:34.560 Custom inboards duty.
00:17:36.720 And this is based on transfer tax or transfer prices.
00:17:41.120 This one's way smaller than I thought.
00:17:43.920 So when we were going through the revenue line items, I came across custom imports.
00:17:49.280 I thought, wow, you know, I see a lot of companies from India, China, you know, Taiwan,
00:17:56.320 different places coming into the country.
00:17:58.720 They're bringing in amounts.
00:18:00.880 I assume the transfer pricing is why this is a lower number than I thought.
00:18:05.920 I, you know, you come in, you bring a good in for 10 cents.
00:18:10.480 You sell it for $4, but you're paying duty on the ship transfer price, which is 10 cents.
00:18:16.960 So I think that's really why we're seeing a lower number.
00:18:21.040 I think this is a unique opportunity for Canada.
00:18:24.560 And I'm not talking like we're going to be a Trump here.
00:18:28.000 But I'm talking about creating an average duty mechanism so we can actually partake in some of
00:18:37.360 the benefits of importing items into Canada and allowing companies to import in.
00:18:44.560 I think, you know, unfortunately, sometimes we're a little bit too generous in Canada
00:18:48.800 Canada and we don't be more open and forthright with our partners as far as how we should be
00:18:57.920 participating as a country.
00:18:59.600 So I think there's a great opportunity here.
00:19:02.000 I think we can actually find some value and some revenue here.
00:19:06.160 But is it a lot?
00:19:07.680 I think it's, you know, somewhere in the, you know, $5 billion range.
00:19:11.440 And I hope we look at it as a government going forward.
00:19:15.440 Other excise taxes.
00:19:17.200 Well, these ones we all know, and I don't think we can do much more with these.
00:19:20.800 I think there's also also a risk that these will go down.
00:19:25.760 So these include taxes on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other luxury items.
00:19:33.600 So $6.8 billion.
00:19:35.760 It's a big number for that.
00:19:38.240 I think these have probably the likelihood to go down.
00:19:42.400 You know, I know alcohol sales you're hearing all the time are decreasing.
00:19:47.440 Tobacco, I think, has kind of hit its lowest level now.
00:19:52.080 Cannabis, you know, we'll see.
00:19:54.160 I don't have a lot of opinions on where that's gone.
00:19:56.960 It kind of spiked up, spiked down.
00:19:59.840 It's leveled off.
00:20:00.800 So let's see where that goes.
00:20:02.480 And luxury items, you know, we're all paying a large excise tax on imported luxury items.
00:20:10.640 The next one I mentioned, employment insurance premiums, a big number.
00:20:15.440 Those come again from the companies, from the corporations, employees.
00:20:19.840 So I think $29.6 billion, it's up quite a bit.
00:20:26.000 As you saw, corporate tax was up.
00:20:27.760 So, you know, as business thrived and growth happened and a lot of good things happened there,
00:20:33.600 we saw EI premiums increase.
00:20:36.160 So for the government, 32.7%.
00:20:40.160 Again, I think we're probably close to the highest level on that one.
00:20:45.920 But, you know, a positive story on that front.
00:20:48.800 Other revenue, and that's income from corporations, service fees, and investments.
00:20:56.400 So foreign exchange gain, interest revenue, crown corporations, fees.
00:21:04.880 All these fit into this bucket.
00:21:06.880 And this is a $37.4 billion bucket, a lot more than I thought.
00:21:11.520 I knew when I paid my passport fee, it went somewhere.
00:21:14.000 But it goes into this line item.
00:21:16.480 This line item's up since 2019, which is surprising.
00:21:23.040 And I know there's been some interesting Crown Corporation developments lately,
00:21:29.760 Canada Post, which I'll talk about in a minute.
00:21:33.040 But that's up by $8.3 billion, or 28.5%.
00:21:37.520 So very interesting stuff and news.
00:21:41.440 Pollution pricing proceeds, carbon tax, well, that's going away.
00:21:46.000 Wasn't around in 2019, around in 2024.
00:21:50.000 We gave rebates, which almost matched.
00:21:52.000 I think the rebates were like $9.5 billion.
00:21:55.120 So I think it netted itself.
00:21:56.480 So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on that.
00:21:59.840 If we go to the next slide, Nick.
00:22:02.880 You know, I wanted to break down other revenue.
00:22:05.040 Because I was really intrigued with this other revenue line item, right?
00:22:08.320 So, you know, $3.2 billion.
00:22:12.720 So this is basically in the 2024 fiscal year end, came from enterprise, Crown Corporation,
00:22:20.720 and business enterprises.
00:22:22.000 $29 billion came from other revenues, which is those fees I talked about.
00:22:28.480 And then net foreign exchange and return on investment
00:22:33.520 from interest made up $4.2 billion.
00:22:39.920 So that equated to $37.3 billion.
00:22:44.240 It's really interesting.
00:22:45.920 So a lot more than I thought, to tell you the truth.
00:22:50.800 If I go to the next slide.
00:22:52.080 So, Nick, let's grab the next slide for a minute.
00:22:54.800 So, you know, we look at a breakdown of 23, 24.
00:23:02.320 And what do we find?
00:23:03.520 We find revenues increased, as we talked about.
00:23:07.680 And we saw enterprises basically contributed a net positive amount, which is great.
00:23:18.080 So we see some of the Crown corporations increasing, which is great.
00:23:22.000 They're adding more value.
00:23:25.040 But, you know, we then see some other growth mainly coming from service fees,
00:23:32.240 which is a very interesting thing.
00:23:34.000 Rents, like I said, passports, which we're going to get into in a minute.
00:23:38.960 And that's a big component of it.
00:23:41.200 Foreign exchange and interest make up the difference.
00:23:44.880 And that's terrific.
00:23:47.040 And now, Nick, I broke down on the next slide, which I go through, you know, some of the
00:23:52.800 and it's hard to read and I apologize for it, but let me read you through it.
00:23:57.600 So this was interesting.
00:23:59.280 Crown corporations, right?
00:24:00.960 Two major ones that popped out of me.
00:24:03.600 The Bank of Canada lost $1.5 billion, which is historically rare, but was recently occurring
00:24:16.560 due to higher interest expenses in the rising rate environment.
00:24:21.840 And then Canada Post, which we know, lost money, but they lost $45 million,
00:24:28.720 which was lower than what I thought.
00:24:31.440 So I didn't, honestly, I thought Canada Post was like hundreds of millions, but they only,
00:24:37.040 well, they only, they lost $45 million, right?
00:24:41.680 So that's interesting.
00:24:44.480 Other ones that were noted in here that fit into this line item.
00:24:48.800 The Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation had a profit of $331 million.
00:24:54.800 Export Development had a profit of $266 million.
00:25:00.560 Business Development Bank of Canada had a profit of $124 million.
00:25:04.880 Farm Credit Canada, which you don't hear much about, had a profit of $183 million.
00:25:11.760 And the Royal Canadian Mint had a $12 million profit.
00:25:16.080 So there you have it.
00:25:19.120 So I guess when, you know, wrapping up, and I just wanted to summarize this,
00:25:24.080 can we do better than $459.5 billion in revenue to the federal government?
00:25:32.800 Sure, we can, right?
00:25:34.080 We can always do better.
00:25:35.440 And I think we'd always want to do better across Canada.
00:25:38.320 But it doesn't, it does appear that we're going to have challenges making more revenue.
00:25:43.200 You know, can we go to the well and increase taxes?
00:25:46.160 I think the citizens probably aren't up for that.
00:25:49.040 Are corporations already contributing a substantial amount?
00:25:52.880 Yes, they are.
00:25:53.600 You just saw that in my analysis.
00:25:55.600 Our corporate taxes has increased.
00:25:58.000 Our EI has increased.
00:25:59.600 All those things that corporations contribute to our society and to our tax base have increased
00:26:05.120 substantially since before COVID, coming out of COVID.
00:26:09.440 You know, our population is small and our taxes is modest to high.
00:26:15.200 So I think we've hit that inflection point where we have to start looking at our expenses.
00:26:23.360 So we simply are trying to grow too fast.
00:26:26.000 I think we get that.
00:26:27.520 We join us in our next show and we're going to examine Canada's key expenses and debts challenge.
00:26:36.400 So we look forward to seeing you subscribe, watch and join us for our next analysis of the 2024 budget.
00:26:52.720 You're welcome.
00:26:53.560 Bye.