Archive for the ‘Governance’ Category
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Radical tax reform is in the wind — here’s how to make it efficient and fair
The bedrock principle of an efficient tax system is neutrality: the system should neither reward nor penalize any particular thing or activity, but should rather apply as evenly and as uniformly as possible: tax everything, and tax it at the same rate… A personal consumption tax, and a corporate cash-flow tax, are essentially mirror images of each other. Together they would make a fine pair of reforms, addressing critical weaknesses in the present system without adding their own.
Tags: economy, featured, ideology, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
Backed into a corner, Liberals seek compromise on parliamentary reform
The government has narrowed the list of issues that it considers crucial — reforming question period to institute a Prime Minister’s Questions once a week; ensuring governments are forced to justify proroguing the House; ending the use of omnibus legislation; and, reform of the Estimates process to give MPs a better sense of what it is on which they are voting. What’s not to like in any of those if you are an opposition MP?
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, participation
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
The dangers in a Liberal plan to ‘fix’ Parliament
The imbalance in Canada’s Parliament is weighted entirely in favour of a majority government and its legislative agenda, not the other way around, as Mr. Trudeau’s party absurdly claims. That’s because MPs, who were once elected to form governments, and oversee them, now mostly serve the wishes of their parties. The neutering of MPs has been constant over the past 50 years, and it is the reason so many Canadians find Parliament to be irrelevant.
Tags: featured, jurisdiction, participation
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Why Morneau got cold feet over ridding Canada of tax credits
To combat a structural problem requires a structural solution… First… An independent committee can be tasked with delivering a bundle of reforms to be accepted or rejected as a whole… Second, the process should deliver a clear and transparent benefit to all taxpayers… Third, any new tax measure should by law become subject to a mandatory review for effectiveness after a set number of years.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, tax
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Tax Fairness? Maybe Next Year, Say Liberals
Closing unfair and ineffective tax loopholes could have raised $16 billion. They failed to deliver, again, on their election promise to end the stock options deduction that gives almost a billion dollars to some of the richest people in Canada. They failed to make the tax system simpler or fairer… How long before regular taxpayers conclude that the promise of fair system was an empty one?
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, participation, privatization, tax
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Liberals defer major tax pledge in 2017 federal budget
… Ottawa chose to hold off on a campaign pledge to raise billions in new revenue by closing tax loopholes that benefit high-income Canadians… But Mr. Morneau is promising to present a paper later this year that will outline potential tax changes that could affect upper-income earners, particularly those who use corporate structures to pay less tax… the Liberals are now setting their sights on private business structures that still allow couples to split income for tax purposes.
Tags: budget, economy, globalization, ideology, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | 1 Comment »
Policy-makers should pay attention to world happiness rankings
That’s the whole purpose of the happiness report. To raise the awareness that there are these scientifically replicable measures of the quality of life that don’t give you the same answers as GDP and don’t invite the same policies that maximizing GDP would mean… If these numbers are taken seriously, it’s to raise the level of policy awareness and discussion.”
Tags: economy, featured, globalization, jurisdiction, participation, standard of living
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Trump threatens to derail Trudeau’s economic fairness agenda
Trump’s vow to cut U.S. taxes “bigly” does make it more difficult for Canada to raise its levies on the well-to-do, which Morneau has also been contemplating. Last year, the finance minister announced plans to look at tax breaks, sometimes called tax expenditures, which cost the federal treasury billions. But the Liberals will find it more difficult to boost taxes on the wealthy if, as expected, Trump’s America is going in the opposite direction.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Cutting the fiscal fat, finance ministers find lot of baloney
Every budget dollar is precommitted to: debt service (approximately 9 per cent), transfers for health, education etc. (24 per cent), guaranteed spending for Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement etc. (17 per cent), and salaries and pensions for its own employees (29 per cent). When all the obligatory spending is sliced from the budget pie, every Canadian finance minister is left with about 20 cents of the budget dollar.
Tags: budget, economy, ideology, jurisdiction, tax
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Ottawa shows courage by killing ‘zombie laws’
The courts long ago threw out the prohibitions against abortion and anal intercourse on constitutional grounds. But politicians have been loath to touch such provisions, wary of the fraught moral debates that have historically surrounded them… The sections in question are not merely quaint anachronisms; they are hurtful relics of less enlightened times.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, rights
Posted in Governance Policy Context | 1 Comment »
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