These observations are not related:
• Politicians and their parties
solicit and receive large cash donations from wealthy people and
businesses, and pretend there is no ethical problem with doing so, as
these gifts obviously come with no strings attached;
• MP Wayne Easter (speaking as a
member of the Liberal caucus and not in his role as chairman of the
Commons Finance Committee) says the government should fulfill its
election promise of reviewing Canada's tax system, with an independent
arms-length committee, not as a study by (and for) federal
bureaucrats. Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who runs the CRA, wants
to keep his options open — and probably keep such a review under
close control;
• Parliamentary Budget Officer
Jean-Denis Fréchette has been trying for years to get the CRA to
release data on the gap between how much taxes our economy should be
producing, and the revenue the CRA actually collects. This is known
as the “tax gap.” Most of the world's leading democracies publish
figures on this so that people will know how much revenue their
governments are losing through the use of offshore tax havens and
other dodges. A published tax gap would also inform the 95 per cent
of Canadians who duly report all their income every year, of what a
bunch of chumps they are.
• The CRA, under the direction of
finance minister Morneau, promises to study the concept of studying
the tax gap;
• The so-called Panama Papers, a
massive leak of of secret documents from the offices of Panama-based
law firm Mossack Fonseca, lists a trove of information on how the
super-rich, the super-famous and some superbly powerful dictators
stash huge amounts of money out of reach of their national tax
agencies. The papers purport to show that offshore banking costs the
Canadian treasury billions of dollars a year — revenue that must be
supplied by the rest of us honest taxpayers;
• Trust in our provincial and federal
governments to manage our economy and social programs fairly and
equitably continues to drop.
Nope, no links in any of the above.
It is difficult to nigh-on impossible
for Canadians to figure out if they are getting a fair deal from
their government, without a high degree of confidence that government
is a good steward of what we send them.
Mostly, we judge governments on how they spend. We talk a lot about budgets and debt levels. We
chatter about stimulus spending versus the need for balanced budgets.
Sometimes, we spare a thought or two
about the increasing wealth gap, but perhaps because so many of us
expect to be rich someday, we don't talk about that too much.
We don't really look at whether our tax
system is fair at all, other than to gripe that we as individuals pay
too much taxes or that other people pay too little.
Without knowing that everyone pays
their fair share, how can we understand what a fair share really is?
When politicians and parties appear beholden to their wealthy and
influential donors, how can we trust them to make big-picture
decisions in our collective best interest?
The government tells us they will
review our total tax system and its myriad tweaks and boutique
breaks, but they will not inform us of how comprehensive or effective
this review will be. It strains confidence that anything will
actually change, because one group of political donors or another
might become unhappy.
It should floor us that the Canada
Revenue Agency — under the direction of both Conservative and
Liberal political masters — will not share its data with the
Parliamentary Budget Office. Or that the chairman of the Commons
Finance Committee cannot speak in his official capacity about a tax
system review. Aren't we on the same team here?
As a society, we are already too
sceptical about the people who hold power over us. There always seems
to be a hidden agenda behind the regime. What deals have been made to
get the money to buy the ads that promise us things in election
campaigns?
The social flap over the Panama Papers
will die down into the background noise of distrust we already have
for government. It will become part of the hum and drone of the
WikiLeaks event, for instance, that told us how our every move can be
monitored by government authorities — who will not tell us what
they owe the people who bought them their elections.
This is a world phenomenon, not just a
Canadian one. But we should expect Canada to do better than the world
at large in producing honest, open and transparent government.
If our tax system needs an overhaul, do
it. Tell us what parts of it we can really do without, and then make
the changes. And help us be confident that it applies fairly, to
everyone.
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