Western Standard - Franco Terrazzano's budget reaction.

00:00:00.240 Love the rant on the bank tax. I think you absolutely nailed it, right? It's really going

00:00:06.300 to fall on Canadians when we go to the banks. Well, higher fees, surprise, surprise. But it's

00:00:11.820 not only that, Corey. Yesterday, we saw the government going after banks and insurance

00:00:17.760 companies. Well, what business, what sector, what industry, what type of Canadian are they

00:00:23.140 going to go after next with higher taxes, right? These taxes on certain businesses,

00:00:28.000 these taxes on the so-called wealthy, they're the Trojan horse of politics. They get the tax 0.67

00:00:34.020 through the door and then they expand it and expand it. And eventually they tax more and more

00:00:39.040 Canadians. And here's just one other point. I've heard some people say, well, how are you going

00:00:43.860 to pay down the $1 trillion debt? Well, when it comes to deficit reduction, this is little more

00:00:48.980 than silly political posturing. Corey, the way the Trudeau government is spending money left,

00:00:53.920 right and center. The government would blow through that type of cash in a day, in a day.

00:00:59.460 And one last thing to end my rant, you know, they, Trudeau talks about the banks and these

00:01:05.720 businesses doing well, you know, who's been doing really well during the pandemic, Mr. Trudeau

00:01:10.340 himself, who's pocketed not one, not two, but three pay raises during the pandemic.

00:01:16.440 Yeah, most of us haven't been enjoying such as, you know, speaking his language. I mean,

00:01:20.500 to throw his own words back when he was talking about that, he said, big banks got a windfall.

00:01:25.300 Well, what the hell did you get, Justin? If the rest of us aren't getting raises.

00:01:29.820 Yeah, no kidding. If you, if you total up the three pandemic pay raises that

00:01:33.480 MPs, our members of parliament gave to themselves, they range all the way from an extra $10,000 in

00:01:40.400 total for your backbencher, all the way up to more than $20,000 for Trudeau compared to his

00:01:47.260 pre-pandemic salary. Oh, good work. If you can get it, it's something else. So where else to go

00:01:55.180 with this budget? Maybe you got a Coles Notes version to give us here to start things off.

00:02:00.820 Oh, I absolutely do. So budget 2022, it's another credit card budget from Canada's national credit

00:02:07.880 card government. We're seeing a huge deficit, $52.8 billion, which follows the last two years

00:02:14.920 of astronomical deficits of 300 billion plus in 2020, a hundred billion plus last year. So another

00:02:21.560 big deficit. What's so frustrating though, Corey, is that this government has absolutely zero plan

00:02:28.360 on when it's going to balance the budget. The best that this government can give taxpayers is,

00:02:33.080 hey, in 2026, we'll finally bring the deficit down to a single digit billions. That's the best

00:02:39.820 they want to give us. And Corey, I don't even know if we can trust them to meet that target.

00:02:44.420 Remember back in the day, Prime Minister Trudeau said he would balance the budget in 2019,

00:02:48.660 but then he missed that target by $20 billion.

00:02:53.020 Yeah. And I mean, I'm glad you pointed out, you can't use that excuse forever. The difference

00:02:58.540 between the pre-pandemic spending budget and our current one. So I mean, there were some exceptional

00:03:02.620 circumstances in the last couple of years, but that excuse has to go by the wayside. We've got to try and

00:03:07.660 look back to what our normal bar of spending was, and they didn't stay anywhere close to within it.

00:03:12.580 And Corey, then if you want to call it normal, if we can call it normal, it really wasn't normal.

00:03:18.140 Remember pre-pandemic, the federal government was spending all time highs. So in 2018, you had Trudeau

00:03:24.600 spending more than the federal government did during any single year during World War II. And yes,

00:03:30.160 that's even after accounting for inflation and population growth. Now this year, Trudeau wants to spend

00:03:36.220 about $452 billion. Corey, that's $90 billion more than pre-pandemic. That's $90 billion more

00:03:47.700 than what the government was spending when it was spending all time highs. So this is another

00:03:52.220 very costly budget. Of course, the pain is being felt today through inflation, and it's going to be

00:03:58.740 felt tomorrow through higher taxes. Well, so some of the spending initiatives, I mean,

00:04:04.460 they really had a housing focus. It was housing, housing, housing. I see billions of dollars

00:04:09.020 committed over the next five or six years towards affordable housing. But does it look like this will

00:04:15.940 be effective whatsoever? I started my rant off with it. People who were listening all the way through,

00:04:19.440 no, I don't believe that. But what's the Taxpayers Interpretation Federation?

00:04:23.940 Yeah, the government wants to tackle affordability with more debt. But trying to fight inflation

00:04:29.880 with more government debt is like trying to put out the fire with a can of gasoline.

00:04:35.520 It's just going to make things worse. Look, this government tries to talk about affordability,

00:04:40.660 and it should care about affordability because Canadians are struggling.

00:04:44.560 Many Canadians can't afford to fuel the car up with gasoline or to put ground beef in the grocery

00:04:49.340 cart. And that's because you have this government that's been spending like crazy for years

00:04:53.640 and raising taxes. But the answer to this inflation problem is not more spending. It's less spending.

00:05:01.380 It's less government deficits. And it's less tax hikes. So we're seeing the government pull us in the

00:05:06.960 wrong direction. We're seeing the government double down on what is really driving this inflation.

00:05:13.020 So let's get to some of the positive areas. I guess not positive in reality, but what would we like

00:05:19.400 to see? How could the budget be balanced? And of course, there's the thing with the people who are

00:05:23.380 fearful and dependent on government largesse all the time. What would be cut?

00:05:28.400 Corey, the government could balance its budget within a few years by 2024, just by bringing spending

00:05:36.400 back to pre-pandemic levels, which were already all time highs. That's how the government could

00:05:42.760 balance the budget. And with overspending that we've seen from this Trudeau government for years

00:05:48.400 and years and years, finding savings in every single area of the budget should be like finding

00:05:53.160 water in the ocean, right? So we should be seeing across the board savings. But let's even set those

00:05:58.580 aside for now. Here's a few other ones. Of course, leadership has to start at the top.

00:06:03.000 MPs got to stop giving themselves pay raises while the people that they're supposed to represent

00:06:08.040 continue to struggle with revolving government lockdowns, restrictions, higher taxes, you name

00:06:13.920 it. But also you can't keep giving bureaucrats bigger pay raises. 312,000 federal government

00:06:20.480 bureaucrats got a pay raise during the pandemic. Let's look at equalization. This is a slush fund

00:06:25.520 for some provincial premiers. It continues to go up by a billion dollars every single year. Well,

00:06:31.540 of course the Canadian Taxpayers Federation presented to the Finance Committee a way to phase out

00:06:37.520 equalization in a fair manner over 20 years. Something like that needs to happen. And Corey,

00:06:42.920 just before our segment, I heard you talking about the gun grab and buyback. Now this is going to be

00:06:49.160 a taxpayer boondoggle. It has every makings of one. This is likely going to cost billions of dollars,

00:06:55.420 but it won't even make Canada safe. And that's because it's going after law abiding citizens.

00:07:00.800 Corey, I don't know about you, but I can't imagine too many gang members showing up at government

00:07:05.160 offices and their guns. No, this is targeting Canadian citizens, law abiding citizens. It's

00:07:11.580 really not going to do much to address the real threat, which is criminal activity and the illegal

00:07:16.840 flow of guns across the border.

00:07:18.160 Yeah. And I mean, this is, it's like the liberals can't learn from their own actions. I mean,

00:07:22.820 it was kind of before your time there, but with Alan Rock and the big gun registry of the nineties

00:07:28.540 and the, and they assured us this is going to cost 20, 30, $40 million. It ended up costing,

00:07:33.880 I believe $10 billion by the time they scrapped it. And again, it wasn't effective. It didn't reduce

00:07:38.360 crime. It didn't take illegal guns off the street. They're just doing the same thing from a different

00:07:42.660 angle and it'll be just as effective and just as expensive, I'm afraid.

00:07:45.540 And Corey, let me talk about two big spending items that really caught my eye in the budget.

00:07:51.900 So even just setting aside all the spending reductions I just named number one, $15 billion

00:07:58.440 on what they're calling some type of growth fund. Now the details aren't really in the budget,

00:08:04.320 but essentially what it smells like is just some corporate welfare slush fund to the tune of $15

00:08:10.160 billion. But look, this government could even balance the budget of a lemonade stand.

00:08:15.540 I don't trust it to be running around playing investment banker with $15 billion worth of

00:08:20.560 taxpayers' money. If they want to grow the economy, cut out the middleman, just keep that $15 billion

00:08:27.240 in taxpayers' pockets and families' pockets and businesses' budgets and let businesses and families

00:08:33.200 do the rest. The next thing that caught my eye, Corey, is a billion dollars to create some type of

00:08:38.440 government agency to be promoting investment and innovation. But Corey, I don't know about you,

00:08:43.620 but doesn't that sound like a bit of an oxymoron? Government agency on innovation?

00:08:49.540 Yeah, no, that's never been an area of skill. And no government's immune from that. I mean,

00:08:54.080 in Alberta, look at our investment in the Keystone. That didn't pay off well. Or

00:08:58.480 going farther back, we went into MagCan. We went into Gainers. We went into Novotel. All these things

00:09:04.740 people don't remember. But the Alberta government got into business all over the place and all of them

00:09:09.080 failed. All of them. Their record was abysmal. And this was an ostensibly conservative government.

00:09:15.780 Now we've got the Liberals running around picking winners and losers. I think the only winners are

00:09:19.820 going to be, of course, those guys who accept the subsidies and the losers will be Canadians as 0.94

00:09:23.520 usual.

00:09:24.080 And the bond fund managers. Don't forget about the bond fund managers because all the interest

00:09:28.820 charges that taxpayers have to pay. Look, it's a crazy amount of money that is being wasted on

00:09:36.400 interest charges on the government credit card. Every single month, taxpayers have to pay more

00:09:41.620 than $2 billion just on interest charges on the government's credit card. Now to put that in

00:09:48.000 perspective, that means taxpayers are paying more this year on federal debt interest charges than the

00:09:55.220 Alberta government will spend on health care. Yeah. And that's just money essentially flushed

00:10:00.900 down the toilet and they're borrowing more. So not only will they add to what we have to pay interest

00:10:06.180 on, but the government, the Bank of Canada has already been signaling they're going to be raising

00:10:09.240 those interest rates in the years to come too. I know it's, it's, it seems like a lot of pain for

00:10:15.680 Canadians. And the reason is, is because you have this government that put itself between a rock and a

00:10:20.660 hard place, years of easy money policy, massive printing of money on display during the pandemic.

00:10:28.600 And of course, overspending for years from the federal government. So, um, look, there's just

00:10:34.240 no way to, um, skip out on paying the piper. Eventually you have to pay the piper. And if you

00:10:40.380 don't believe so, well then just ask the finance ministers from the 1990s, what happens when politicians

00:10:46.480 kick the deficit can down the road for far too long? Remember in the nineties, Corey, you'll remember

00:10:51.900 this. Maybe I won't, but you had these finance ministers, um, from all levels of government from

00:10:58.460 different political parties who had to make some very, very, very tough decisions. And what we

00:11:03.860 continue to say now is either this government makes some tough decisions like bringing spending

00:11:09.140 back to pre pandemic levels, which were already all time highs or tougher decisions are going to be

00:11:15.340 forced on us. Just like what happened in Saskatchewan, when you had an NDP government that was forced

00:11:20.740 to close more than 50 hospitals across that Prairie province.

00:11:24.520 Well, that's it. I mean, fiscal reality does come home to roost. There's a lot of parts of

00:11:29.640 the nineties. I don't remember really well, but I, I've, uh, I, I indulged a lot in those days,

00:11:34.460 but I do remember the politics a lot of the time and, and, uh, yeah, politicians of every stripe had to do

00:11:40.580 it. The Romano NDP government had to balance their budget. Jean Chrétien, a liberal government

00:11:45.800 had to balance their budget. And this will eventually come to us. And I mean, it doesn't

00:11:51.300 matter how much the union scream and how much the left screams, because that's what happens when the

00:11:54.960 cuts come, when the, when the cupboard truly becomes bare, it doesn't matter if it's an NDP

00:12:00.060 government, a liberal government, they have to cut. And if we'd cut modestly now, it'll save from the

00:12:05.340 drastic cuts later, but not enough people seem to realize that yet. And I also want to just make it

00:12:10.260 clear. This isn't just consequences for years down the road, right? A lot of people, when they think

00:12:14.940 about government debt, they think of, yeah, there's, there's money being wasted on interest payments

00:12:18.960 and it's too much money. We need that to be going and used to build more hospitals, roads, lower taxes,

00:12:24.300 things of that nature. But we're also seeing real life consequences today. The inflation tax is showing

00:12:32.220 Canadians firsthand that you can't just have government debt running wild. You can't have

00:12:37.620 the government's printing press on overdrive and think that nothing's going to happen during the

00:12:42.440 pandemic. We saw the federal government central bank, the bank of Canada print $370 billion right

00:12:49.660 out of thin air, buying financial assets like government of Canada debt. And the problem there

00:12:55.600 is the more dollars that this bank of Canada prints, the less that your dollars in your bank account

00:13:00.940 or in your savings account will buy. So it sure has seemed that Ottawa has been financing a good

00:13:07.440 chunk of its deficits with the printing press, which means that Ottawa has been financing and

00:13:13.940 getting some of its money by devaluing your money. That's the inflation tax and the debt is

00:13:20.340 having a real world consequence by driving up the cost of living here in Canada.

00:13:24.940 Yeah. And it's just brutal on people with fixed incomes and such. I mean, you can't flex and

00:13:30.280 move to go with that. I mean, some people can float a bit with inflation, their salaries will increase

00:13:34.780 a bit, but not everybody's in that position and it's going to be very harmful. There was also some

00:13:40.360 payroll taxes that rose. Yep. Payroll taxes are up again in 2022. Expect to pay about $400 extra if

00:13:50.740 you're making about $65,000 or more just through payroll taxes. So what really caught the eye in

00:13:56.740 the budget, I think of, of the media is the, um, is the bank and insurance tax. But we also have to

00:14:02.360 remember that taxes are going up this year, even outside of what was really in that budget. And I'm

00:14:07.660 talking about the carbon tax, right? That's got, that just went up April one, alcohol taxes just went up

00:14:13.300 April one. And payroll taxes are, are, are also going up in 2022.

00:14:19.040 So was there a couple of taxes they reduced somewhere just to throw a little credit where due?

00:14:24.040 Well, yeah. Um, there was, I guess, two types of tax reductions. There was a tax on low alcoholic beer and

00:14:32.300 excise tax on that. And there should have never been an excise tax on lower non-alcoholic beverages, right? So it's good to

00:14:39.260 see the government, um, scrap that that's, that's good policy credit where credit's due. And there was

00:14:43.900 some other tax relief for small businesses. Oh, I mean, everyone knows that small businesses need tax

00:14:50.040 relief, especially right now after the last two years that governments have put them through and the

00:14:54.680 government is, um, allowing more businesses. So medium sized businesses to be eligible for the small

00:15:00.680 business tax rate, which is lower than the general business tax rate. So those are both, you know, good moves

00:15:06.540 for sure. Um, but not even close to what we, what we need to be seeing from this government on tax

00:15:12.640 relief. Yeah, no, they, they are drops in the bucket and, uh, you know, but I guess it's just,

00:15:17.800 it's worth mentioning. We're here to cover the whole budget. I mean, what it gets me is any kind

00:15:22.100 of increase to payroll taxes. I mean, government talks about taxes as being something to stop the

00:15:26.200 activity of something. Well, when you're going to tax people on their employment, you're going to reduce

00:15:30.480 their employment. They don't seem to understand that when it comes. Yeah. And that's money that they

00:15:35.200 should be leaving in Canadians pockets. Families are having such a difficult time. Canadians are

00:15:39.460 having such a difficult time, but also that's a, that impacts businesses as well. And obviously

00:15:44.340 businesses need liquidity. They need to have money to reinvest in their opposite operations, get more

00:15:50.640 people back to work. So it should be a no brainer that right now is the worst possible time to raise

00:15:56.200 taxes. So very unfortunate that Ottawa continues to raise taxes. And Corey, I think it's important to talk

00:16:02.140 about international comparisons here because we're seeing other countries do the exact opposite.

00:16:07.280 We saw South Korea reduce gas taxes by 20%. We saw both, uh, France and Spain reduce electricity

00:16:13.800 taxes, Italy reducing taxes as well. You have India that cut fuel taxes, Poland cut fuel taxes,

00:16:20.240 Sri Lanka cutting taxes. The United Kingdom just announced fuel tax relief. Corey, you even have

00:16:26.520 President Joe Biden down South saying that he is considering big time gas tax relief. So you have

00:16:32.480 these other countries that are reducing taxes while Ottawa continues to make our lives harder with higher

00:16:38.560 tax bills. Yeah, we're certainly, uh, not going to remain competitive for, uh, for much longer at that

00:16:44.060 rate. Well, uh, thanks for the update today, Franco. I knew it wasn't going to be all, uh, sunshine and

00:16:49.120 lollipops, but we need that, you know, realistic breakdown of what we're facing year by year on these

00:16:54.080 things. And hopefully enough people will eventually, uh, turn that tide at some point. So where can we

00:17:00.300 find more information on what you do and, uh, where people can push back a bit against, uh, this ever

00:17:06.000 increasing tax burden? Head over to taxpayer.com, check out our newsroom, check out the petitions on

00:17:11.940 there, follow us on Facebook, just type in Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and you can follow us on Twitter

00:17:16.640 as well. And Corey, thank you so much for having me on today.

Western Standard - April 08, 2022

Franco Terrazzano's budget reaction.

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript