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

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. 1.00

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. 1.00

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.

True Patriot Love - September 25, 2025

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

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