On April 1st, Canadian MPs will be getting a raise of up to $16,000. Is it time for politicians to stop taking more money out of your wallet? Or is it time to cut their pay?
00:00:00.000April 1st. You know, I know everybody jokes about being April Fool's Day, but it is also the day that the federal government really likes to kind of lay on the bulk of their increases. They kind of hit us. I mean, my theory has always been people are in a good mood. Winter's melting off, you know, summer's approaching. They're planning their vacations. They got their tax return, perhaps, and they might not be thinking about it as much. So the government times that real swift kick at that period of the year. What do we got going on this April?
00:00:25.920Well, April 1st. Carbon tax up. Alcohol tax is up. And MP pay. Member of Parliament pay. You guessed it, folks. Also going up. Isn't that nice? Hey, on the very same day that they take more money out of your wallet, they're going to be stuffing more money into their own. Now, happy to break it all down, but let's just start with the Member of Parliament pay raise.
00:00:48.200So right now, you have a back, a backbencher who's collecting dust in the House of Commons is also collecting $194,000 salary. You have Trudeau that's collecting a salary about $389,000.
00:01:01.760Well, the April 1st pay raise will range from an estimated extra $8,000 for a backbencher to an extra $16,000 for Trudeau. So let me just tell you what that salary will be after the raise. Backbenchers, $202,000. Ministers like Freeland or Guibo, $299,000.
00:01:24.880Now, I don't know why Freeland would get a raise when she can't balance the budget of a lemonade stand, but that's another conversation. And the Prime Minister's salary after the raise, $405,000.
00:01:38.460Do you guys do any comparisons with, say, other comparable countries to ours? Like, is Canada on the high side of compensation when it comes to our elected officials?
00:01:46.240Yeah, I do remember even seeing the Hill Times doing comparison about this just after last year's raise. And Canada was, if I can remember correctly, one of the high ones among the G7. I know for a long time, we've also been quite high among Commonwealth countries.
00:02:02.000But what also is unique, if I could use that word about our federal government, is that while many other countries around the world saw politicians cut their pay during the lockdowns, the pandemic years, like, remember Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, blast from the past, sorry, folks.
00:02:22.440But she took a 20% pay cut when the pandemic happened. Her, her ministers and her top bureaucrats. But every single year, since the beginning of 2020, since these tough times, MPs of all political parties have taken a raise every single year.
00:02:37.360So this April will be their fifth pay raise since the beginning of 2020. So lockdowns, pandemic, job losses, business losses, inflation, housing crisis, record number of Canadians going to food banks. Didn't matter to MPs. They just took another raise.
00:02:54.440How about some of our other high profile people like our Governor General and such? I imagine they've got some built in lucre coming in for the year.
00:03:01.660Yeah, well, we haven't released numbers on the Governor General's salary yet. But in previous years, yeah, pay keeps going up. Another thing too, right? Top bureaucrats, they get bonuses. Almost every single government executive is taking a bonus every year. It's like 90% of government executives taking a bonus.
00:03:21.860So, you know, we hear these politicians all the time like to say, we're all in this together. We're all in this together. But they're not talking about you and me. No, no, no, no. They're talking about all 338 of them up in Ottawa. That's who's in this together. Because look, folks, all political parties, the deafening from every political party about the upcoming pay raise, or sorry, the silence from them has been deafening.
00:03:47.160Look at me stumble over my own words here, folks. But look, here's the thing, right? MPs could stop the pay raise tomorrow. They did so with like relatively simple legislation back in 2010 to 2013. All that's lacking now is just the political will to actually stop taking more money.
00:04:04.880Well, that's it. And it gets me with some of those high positions. I know we should pay them fairly well. I mean, we want to draw people from professions that are, you know, they can bring that skill and apply it to an elected position.
00:04:16.440But boy, some of the ones, especially in the high profile, like the prime minister or the governor general, because they live lives that are practically expense-free.
00:04:24.160They're housed. Their travel is covered. They can expense virtually everything from meals to you name it. So, I mean, their compensation is practically going straight into the bank, you know, on top of everything else.
00:04:35.940It's such a slap in the face when they're always telling the rest of us why we got to tighten our belts.
00:04:40.260Well, Corey, you know, let me break down why this MP pay raise is so bad, even just beyond the symbolism, which is important. You need leadership.
00:04:47.700But even beyond that. So, number one, you're talking about attracting better people into government.
00:04:53.200Well, we've been giving them raises every single year for how many years now? It doesn't feel like government's getting any better.
00:05:00.360But look, at the heart of it, I might say something controversial here, but at the heart of it, I don't think we need better government.
00:05:06.520I don't think we need more elitists trying to control Canadians' lives. We need less government.
00:05:12.680We need less government. That's what we need. Cut taxes. Stop spending so much.
00:05:16.100Stop doing so much that you're doing that's creating all these hardships.
00:05:20.240But number two, all these pay raises, you know what's happened?
00:05:25.020Our members of parliament, the people in the House of Commons, who are supposed to represent us common people,
00:05:31.640they've become financially divorced from the reality that we live in.
00:05:36.040So, no wonder they're raising all these taxes, printing all these money, having these huge deficits that drive inflation.
00:05:51.460And before the major union went on strike last year in Ottawa, they were pointing to member of parliament pay raises as a reason why the bureaucrats should also take more money from taxpayers.
00:06:03.360So, look, these MPs, they need to cut their own pay so they have the moral authority to force the departments to actually find some savings as well.
00:06:13.300Well, yeah, and you mean you brought up even New Zealand.
00:06:16.520I mean, you're talking about somebody who's certainly not a conservative, who at least led by example in that front.
00:06:20.960I'm going way farther back for some of the folks, I guess.
00:06:24.000But that was one of the first things that Ralph Klein did before he cut, and he cut the civil service, but he cut MLA pay first.
00:06:31.380And they were still well compensated, but at least it showed, hey, we're taking our hit before we put it on to others.
00:06:37.460And if this federal government is showing no interest in trimming their own compensation, then, yeah, it doesn't look like they have any interest whatsoever in trimming the expenses of the bureaucracy.
00:06:46.460And they don't, you know, like the Trudeau government has added, what, like 98,000 bureaucrats since it came to power, a 40% increase.
00:06:56.200I think the total increase in payroll for the federal government has gone up by more than 60% since 2016.
00:07:04.340Bonuses, pay raises, tens of thousands of additional bureaucrats.
00:07:08.980And we wonder why our tax bill keeps going through the roof.
00:07:12.700And it's not even just taxes that are going up.
00:08:01.320I mean, Prime Minister Trudeau just the other day said if he could just sit down with every Canadian for five minutes, he'd make us understand why the carbon tax is actually good for us.
00:08:10.900Maybe you can explain it because I'm not sure how he could convince me in five minutes to do that.
00:08:14.940Yeah, as if like, like, it's almost insulting to our intelligence.
00:08:28.880We do understand that the carbon tax makes it more expensive for us to fuel our cars to get to work.
00:08:34.340We do understand that the carbon tax makes it more expensive for us to heat our homes during winter.
00:08:39.960We do understand that the carbon tax makes every trip to the grocery store more expensive.
00:08:44.820It's the politicians with these inflated salaries, the inflated pensions, the inflated perks who don't understand what they're doing to the people.
00:08:53.720And, you know, the carbon tax, guess what, folks?
00:08:55.680Going up April 1 again, it'll cost 17 cents a liter of gas, about 21 cents per liter of diesel.
00:09:03.740And about 15 cents per cubic meter of natural gas.
00:09:07.220And for the average Alberta family, well, the carbon tax will cost the average Alberta family about $900 more in a year than what they get back in rebates.
00:09:17.860And that's money we just can't afford to keep pumping out.
00:09:22.600I mean, I know that Trudeau is not going to convince us the carbon tax is good, but maybe you can convince enough elected officials that it's bad.
00:09:29.820I appreciate you guys at the Federation holding their feet to the fire.
00:09:33.120Where can people find more information on what you're up to, Franco?
00:09:35.760Hey, if you guys like what we're doing, head over to Taxpayer.com, sign a couple of petitions.
00:09:40.740You can follow us on essentially all big social media platforms.
00:09:44.720Just type in Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:09:47.140If you want to follow me, just type in at Franco underscore nomics.
00:09:50.740And Corey, thank you so much for having me on today.
00:09:53.240I hope you have a great rest of your day.