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ESG doctrine and why it should not be adopted in professional organizations

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22 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Graham Lane | Ian Madsen

The following introductory comments by Ian Madsen, Senior Policy Analyst, Frontier Centre for Public Policy provide background on Graham Lane whose attached letter to CPA Manitoba strongly criticizes that organization’s embrace of ESG.

Graham Lane is a retired CA and has had a multifaceted professional career spanning almost 50 years in the public and private sectors of seven provinces as a Senior Executive and Consultant.

In the public sector, before concluding his career as the Chairman of the Manitoba Public Utility Board (PUB), he consulted for three provincial governments and was employed by four provinces. In Manitoba, he was the CEO of Credit Union Central, bringing in online banking, a Vice-President of Public Investments of Manitoba, the interim President of Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI), reorganizing the corporation after its massive losses of 1986, a Vice-President of the University of Winnipeg, and the CEO of the Workers Compensation Board, restructuring the insurer and returning it to solvency. His experience with Crown Corporations goes well beyond Manitoba, he was the Comptroller of Saskatchewan’s Crown Investments Corporation, and a consultant reviewing government auto insurance in BC and workers compensation in Nova Scotia. He received the gold medal in Philosophy as an undergraduate, and a Paul Harris Fellowship from Rotary International for excellence in vocational service. Throughout his career, and wherever he worked, consulted or volunteered, he maintained an external objectivity.  In recent years the Frontier Centre for Public Policy has been honoured by his presence of the Centre’s Expert Advisory Panel where he has been able to share his extensive public and private sector operations knowledge.

Environmental, Social and Governance Standards, so-called ESG’, and scoring arose from ‘Responsible Investing’ efforts in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Institutional and other investors sought to influence corporations that were seen to be involved in, first, the Vietnam War, and, later on, in conducting business in Apartheid-era South Africa.  Since then, the movement has morphed, now evolved into ESG.

ESG is essentially a covert way of exerting control over public companies by means other than buying control in the stock market.  It is a ‘so-called’ ‘Social Justice’ movement.  It seeks to impose non-market ideology on publicly traded companies, such as ‘Green Energy’ and ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’, or, ‘DEI’.  The latter two are the main goals of the effort, and are divisive and destructive.  There are three paths that this crusade takes:  regulatory, professional, and institutional. 

The regulatory one is to compel governments to require that ESG standards be applied.  This can occur through regulatory agencies such as the Ontario Securities Commission, the most powerful such body in Canada, or through its sister regulatory bodies in other provinces and territories.  Federal and provincial legislation can also be passed and implemented to force some or all ESG-related strictures upon corporations.

This institutional path exerts influence upon the largest investors in Canada:  public pension plans, such as the Canada Pension Plan and its CPP Investment Board, Quebec’s Caisse de depot et placements, which does the same for enrolees in Quebec; the federal Public Service Pension Plan, Ontario Teachers; and other provincial and professional pension plan investment bodies.  Many, if not all of them, to a greater or lesser extent, have already agreed to and endorse ESG ‘principles’, and now attempt to induce the companies they invest in to subscribe to those edicts.

The professional path is, perhaps, the most pernicious.  ESG scoring and rating are akin to accounting and financial reporting and analysis, so the professional bodies responsible for those things, such as provincial and national accounting professionals associations, and national and international associations of financial analysts, such as the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute, have begun to adopt ESG regimens.

However, ESG scoring is not just harmful, it is wildly subjective and susceptible to inaccuracy.  ESG evolved from Marxist notions of ‘equity’.  It is aligned with collectivist, non-market ideology.  Transferring much or most managerial decision-making to those with neither direct expertise nor responsibility for its consequences would be irresponsible, an attack on capitalism itself. 

Informed and strong opposition, as in the following letter from 2023 by Graham Lane, to the President of the Manitoba office of the Chartered Professional Accounts, should be heeded if citizens, taxpayers, investors and society at large want to avoid the Canadian economy becoming dominated by and managed by ESG criteria.  These diverge radically from traditional proven fiduciary and corporate stewardship standards and principles – in favour of ‘Social Justice’ approved outcomes –  which potentially damage or destroy returns for pension plan members, and other indirect and direct investors and the economy as a whole.

Ian Madsen
Senior Policy Analyst
January 4, 2024


Text of letter begins below:

Graham Lane, CPA CA (retired)
xxx (address withheld)
Winnipeg, MB

Geeta Tucker, FCPA, FCMA
President and CEO
CPA Manitoba Office
1675 – One Lombard Place
Winnipeg, MB
R3B OX3

August 26, 2023

Re:   ESG courses and accreditation, CPA – “A New Frontier: Sustainability and ESG for CPAs and business professionals” (CPA Canada Career and Professional Development)

Dear Ms. Geeta Tucker:

I recently read, with concern, that the association is offering ESG ‘training’, towards immersing members in validating the Environmental Social Governance – ESG’ -movement’.  (“A New Frontier: Sustainability and ESG for CPAs and business professionals.”)  I also note, with further concern, a supporting column published on the subject (July/August 2023 Pivot CPA magazine).  Our profession and members should ‘think twice’ before ‘jumping in’.

“ESG” stands for environment, social and governance. ESG investors aim to buy the shares of companies that have demonstrated their willingness to improve their performance in these areas. ESG is an acronym that refers of environmental, social, and governance standards that socially conscious investors use to select investments. These criteria consider how well public companies safeguard the environment and the communities where it works, and how they ensure management and corporate governance met high standards.  For many people, ESG investing is more than a three-acronym. It’s a practical, real-world process for addressing how a company serves all its stakeholders: workers, communities, customers, shareholders and the environment.  ESG offers one strategy for aligning your investment with your values, it’s not the only approach.”

But, the ESG ‘movement’, originally driven by good intentions, has been co-opted by lobbyists, special interest groups, and various NGOs.  Recent reviews have revealed ESG’s lackluster performance in creating meaningful environment change, and others have highlighted chronic abuse of flawed methodologies.

ESG has gradually suffused the business and finance world, from its origins in academia and the ‘activist’ movements of various ‘social justice’ interest groups.  Now, through the actions of provincial and national CPA bodies, our profession is validating and endorsing the central tenets and precepts of ESG valuation, which is misguided and harmful. ESG is antithetical to the aims of the accounting profession, which is, in part, to give honest, objective and rigorous appraisal of the assets, liabilities, and the profit and cash generating capacity of firms.  Risk factors and externalities, including environmental issues, are already covered by GAAP and IFRS standards in financial reporting.

While the proponents of ESG promote it as a means of providing a fuller perspective on important aspects of a firm’s place in society, its community, and the ecosystem, and of its handling of other ‘stakeholders’, who are neither shareholders nor managers of a firm, it does not.  In fact, by dubiously evaluating those other aspects of a firm’s status, it badly serves investors by creating possibly devastating conflicts and contradictions.  This could imperil a firm and its ability to act autonomously towards providing goods and services to the public, jobs to its employees, and dividends (or capital gains) to its owners (ultimately, the public).

The problem of ESG evaluation and its ‘scoring’ are well-known.  There is a lack of consistent standards and objectivity, including those of quantitative metrics that are logical and germane. ESG’s principles are dedicated to diverting and subverting top management; i.e., by substituting other ‘stakeholder’ concerns or aims from those of the firm – which is, principally, to seek short-term and long-term profitability and viability, subject to the constraints of laws, regulations, and physical limitations.

It is important to recall that ESG’s origins were in social activism, with the ‘S’ linked to anti-Apartheid movements on university campus and shareholders’ meetings in the 1980’s and ‘90’s.  Then the ‘S’ was ‘Responsible Investing’ – an attempt to isolate and boycott the then-racist regime in South Africa.  Then, by bringing the-apartheid regime to the negotiating table, with representatives of the disenfranchised opposition, eventually, it brought to an end to Apartheid itself.

Efforts should continue to draw attention to ‘conflict diamonds’, and minerals being extracted by indentured children and adults in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with the continuing oppression of minority groups in regions of China.  For these situations, and, other places around the world where there are violent or corrupt regimes, western companies should be careful as to their dealings. Yet, these problems are generally already noted as business risks in proper, professional, corporate reporting, and are also subject to the law and multilateral guidelines and sanctions.

The ‘Environmental’ component of ESG is, perhaps, the primary one that the anti-capitalist movement have been most preoccupied with.  It, the movement, accepts entirely, and bases its ideology on, presumptions that are not, despite media rhetoric, accurate.  It is not true that global temperatures that are unadjusted or otherwise manipulated by un-objective persons are rising.

Nor is rising temperatures are ‘entirely’ due to higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is not the most important factor in the direction, or magnitude, of any warming temperatures that might occur.  Nor do any of some vaunted climate models predict (at least with any degree of certainty) what temperatures will be anywhere on the planet, let alone on average. Such efforts have repeatedly provided false projections.

Media and academic pundits have cited heat waves, or other events, as evidence of the tangible effects of purported warming, but these have been anecdotal and ignored other events, with contradictory evidence in other regions.  Past predictions of ice cap and glacier melting, desertification, and more and stronger storms and other dire events, have yet come to naught.

Another fraught part of the ‘E’ in ESG scoring is determining ‘Scope 1, 2 and 3’ GHG emissions.  The first one, ‘Scope 1’, is not ‘terribly difficult’ to do, but the other two Scopes 2 and 3, need to delve into what suppliers, customers and others do with the goods or services of the subject firm. These would be extremely difficult to determine let alone accurately quantify – and can be very expensive and/or unreliable to even attempt to calculate.  At best, such tests might also give a distorted impression of an environmental impact – even ‘damage’ ’ that the firm may, or may not be, imparting.

Finally, the whole ‘Green Transition’ has become a rent-seeking lobby, attempting to capture government and its tax dollars.  Their proponents’ supposition of touted ‘benefits’ of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and batteries – drastically altering or decimating the conventional energy, transportation and agriculture industries – are often erroneous or fraudulent, ignoring the full costs, financial and environmental, of their proposals.

The ’G’, ‘Governance’, part of ESG is also elusive and amorphous.  While some of it has to do with the accountability of upper management, that is already covered by the responsibility of the Compensation, Nomination and Succession committees of the Boards of Directors (of all but the smallest companies), and also by regulations and supervision of applicable provincial Securities Commissions.  Any malfeasance by managers or other employees, or by governments or other overseas organizations, involving bribery or other crimes, is covered by laws already.  Engagement with ‘less-than-perfect’ regimes overseas is unavoidable for some industries, and it is unlikely that any quantitative scoring of such interactions or presence would or could be validly determined.

Another aim of the ESG effort is to compel companies to commit to some form of DEI: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’.

In practice, DEI cannot merely be about outreach to historically disadvantaged or under-represented communities, but cqn lead to active discrimination against employees or potential hires who are not members of those communities.  Commitment to hiring and promotion goals in those communities is legally questionable, but that is almost the least of the problems DEI entails.  One of the worst is about the engagement of DEI directors, or outside DEI consultants, to conduct divisive and stressful DEI training, such as sensitivity and ‘microaggression’ awareness and role-playing exercises.

ESG scoring that rewards destructive efforts would or could make companies and organizations alter their operation to appear to ‘earn’ higher scores, while actually damaging their ability to foster a productive work environment, retain qualified staff, generate an adequate rate of return on invested capital, or survive as a going concern.

Another element of the ‘G’ in ESG is to try to inject parties other than shareholders or management into Governance, diluting shareholders’ control – which could or would obscure responsibility and accountability, and could badly delay or derail important capital allocation and other corporate decisions.  These groups are suppliers, customers, those affected by the operations or products or services of the company, and communities in which the company operates, and potentially others.  A covert attempt to subvert capitalism itself, and the market economy, might happen.

ESG advocates have engendered support by claiming that higher-ESG rated firms, and the shares in those firms, perform better than the ‘typical’ company.  However, that is untrue.  Studies of Canadian and American ESG and ‘Ethical’ funds (over the past five, ten, and even longer time periods) indicate that they underperform index funds; i.e., funds that invest in the entire market of large firms traded on a stock exchange.

Any funds that claim otherwise are consciously, or unconsciously investing in a style tilted to certain sectors; quite often the low-environmental impact IT sector. Such companies can perform well in a shorter time frame.  When examining ESG funds, moreover, it often turns out that they invest in most of the same companies as the index funds – though perhaps with a higher management fee.  Also, they could have peculiar criteria for higher ESG ratings, most glaringly rating some oil companies higher than other apparently ‘Green’ ones, such as Tesla.  Elimination of low-ESG rated firms from investing can concentrate risk by narrowing diversification, thus violating a central, crucial tenet of investment risk management.

ESG has gained considerable support from corporate interests, including prominent institutional investors such as Blackrock (Chairman, Larry Fink) and public pension funds.  While such ‘responsible investing’ may have a glowing aura, it can also have a pernicious effect of trying to coerce corporate management to attain public policy that ‘progressive’ politicians, academics, think tanks and other operatives believe are paramount.  Those goals can supersede the shareholder returns that are vital to guarantee beneficiaries of pension funds and other institutional investment portfolios receive their promised benefits. This could violate the fiduciary duty of investment portfolio managers, which is to  strive for the best risk-adjusted return that they can. (Several ‘green energy’ companies’ share prices have declined, some drastically in the past year.)

Several state governments in the United States have prohibited ESG-based investment.The Saskatchewan and Alberta provincial governments may also intercede if this ‘movement’ strikes at the vital energy industry.

Giving the considerable reputational power of CPAs, for the Association to ‘educate’ its members in a potentially destructive endeavour, such as ESG evaluation, is a mistake. It would be folly to add yet more risk and damage by validating and promoting ESG.

ESG advocates are now on the defensive, from information available recounted herein. Shouldn’t our profession review its decision to promote ESG?

Yours Sincerely,

Graham Lane, CPA CA (retired)
Former Chairman, Manitoba’s Public Utilities Board

c.c. Pamela Steer, CEO, President and CEO, CPA, Canada
Paul Ferris, Editor, Pivot, CPA Canada

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The Digital Services Tax Q&A: “It was going to be complicated and messy”

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A tax expert on the departed Digital Services Tax, and the fiscal and policy holes it leaves behind

It’s fun, and fair, arguing whether Mark Carney “caved” in suspending the application of Canada’s Digital Services Tax to revive broader negotiations with the Trump administration. But I figure there are other dimensions to this issue besides tactics. So I got in touch with Allison Christians, a tax law professor at McGill University and the founding director of the Canadian Centre for Tax Policy.

In our talk, Christians discusses the policy landscape that led to the introduction of the DST; the pressure that contributed to its demise; and the ways other countries are addressing a central contradiction of the modern policy landscape: without some kind of digital tax, countries risk having to impose costs on their own digital industry that the overwhelmingly US-based multinationals can avoid.

I spoke to Christians on Friday. Her remarks are edited for length and clarity.


 

Paul Wells: I noticed in your social media that you express inordinate fondness for tax law.

Allison Christians: You will not find a more passionate adherent to the tax cult than me. Yes, I do. I love tax law. Of course I do. How could you not? How could you not love tax law?

PW: What’s to love about tax law?

Christians: Well, tax law is how we create our country. That’s how we build our society. That’s how we create the communities that we want to live in and the lifestyle that we want to share with our neighbours. That’s how: with tax law.

PW: I guess the goal [of tax policy] is to generate the largest amount of revenue with the smallest amount of grief? And to send social signals while you’re at it. Is that right?

Christians: I don’t think so. Tax is not about raising maximum revenue. Tax is about deciding what society you’re trying to build and what portions of that society need to be made public, and what can be left to private interests which then need to profit. So we have decided in Canada, as a country, that basic minimum healthcare cannot be a for-profit enterprise. It has to be a public enterprise in order to make sure that it works for everybody to a certain basic level. So tax is about making those decisions: are we going to privatize everything and everyone pays for their own health care, security, roads, insurance, fire department etc. And if they can’t pay, then too bad? Or are we going to have a certain minimum, and that minimum is going to be provided in a public way that harmonizes across the communities that we have. And that’s what tax is about. It’s not about extracting revenue at all. It’s about creating revenue. It’s about creating a market. It’s about investing in a community. So I just object to the whole idea that tax is about extracting something from me, because what tax is doing is creating a market for me to be able to thrive. Not just me, but all of my neighbours, as well.

PW: Let’s jump forward to the events of the past couple weeks. Were you surprised when the Prime Minister suspended the Digital Services Tax?

Christians: I think “surprise” is probably too strong of a word, because nothing any political leader does to cope with the volatility of the United States would surprise me. We are dealing with a major threat, a threat that is threatening to annex us, to take our resources, to take our sovereignty, to take our communities and rip them apart and turn them into a different way of being. And that’s a serious threat. So nothing would surprise me in response to that. Disappointed, of course. But not disappointed in our Canadian response. More disappointed in the juggernaut that Trump has been allowed to become by his base, and that they’re pulling the rug out from under everyone that’s cooperated with the US agenda for decades, including us.

PW: What’s your best understanding of what the Digital Services Tax was designed to accomplish? And is it unusual as taxes go?

Christians: So to understand this, you really have to be a policy wonk, which isn’t much fun. So I’m gonna give you an example that might make it clear from the perspective of Canada. Why we might have a Digital Service Tax or might want something like it.

I want to preface this by saying that the Digital Service Tax is by no means the only way to do the underlying things we want to accomplish. Certainly other countries have been collecting DSTs and have been collecting billions of dollars, and US companies have had reserves for paying that Digital Service Tax. So we just left money on the table. But let me try to explain why we want to do the thing without getting too “tax nerdy” on you.

So I’m sure you can come up with the one Canadian company that’s streaming content on television or on digital devices.

PWCrave?

Christians: Yeah, that’s the one. Crave is owned by Bell Media and is a Canadian company. And Crave pays taxes in Canada. Crave has to compete against Netflix, which does not have to pay tax in Canada. Netflix just simply doesn’t have to pay the same way that Crave does unless we force them to pay. Crave has to compete with US and foreign content streamers. We may get to a point where we can get Netflix to collect some sales tax on the GST, for example. But if Netflix itself stays out of Canada, physically, but it’s still getting all those customers that otherwise Crave would have access to, then Crave is at a structural disadvantage.

Now tell me which Canadian provider competes with Google.

PW: I can’t think of one.

Christians: Exactly. There isn’t one. How are we supposed to get a homegrown competitor when our competition simply does not pay taxes, and any one we would grow here in Canada has to pay tax here? So we have to understand the Digital Service Tax as simply our response to the fact that we normally do not tax a company unless they are physically located in Canada. But now we’ve got to go into this digital space and say: you’re still here, even if we can’t see you and talk to you, you’re still here. You’re doing something in our market. And that’s what the Digital Service Tax was trying to deal with.

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PW: Now, how are companies likely to respond to this Digital Services Tax? It seems to me the likeliest outcome would be that they would pass those costs on to their customers.

Christians: Yes, that is what companies have said they would do. Google talked about passing those costs on to the customers. And their customers obviously are advertisers. I want to point out that advertisers in Canada used to advertise in local newspapers and media. Now they advertise on Facebook, owned by an American-headquartered Company, Meta. Right now, they advertise on those foreign platforms, so we don’t have those advertising dollars here. Advertisers might have had to pay the Digital Service Tax if Google, or whoever, had passed it on to them. I think it’s fair to say, that Canadians advertising on those foreign platforms would have faced a gross-up to cover that tax.

PW: So, the net effect is that it just becomes more expensive for Canadian consumers. I’ve seen it argued that all this tax would have succeeded in doing is making Netflix more expensive.

Christians: Okay, that’s possible. I mean, that assumes the supply is totally elastic: you can increase the price of Netflix, and people will still pay it indefinitely. Right? So that’s the assumption in the short term. But the long-term assumption is that Crave becomes more competitive — because its competitors are paying the same tax that it is paying. The Crave subscription price may or may not respond, but if you put pressure on the foreign service providers in the same manner that’s on the Canadian providers, it might cost more, but we’re also getting the tax.

PW: I believe the Prime Minister, in an interview with the CBC said that he was thinking of getting rid of this thing, anyway. [The quote I’m reaching for here is: “Look, what we did this week is something that I think we were going to do anyways, in the end, for the deal.” At 1:07 in this video. — pw] Why do you think he would have been leaning in that direction? And do you think that absent a Truth Social post by President Trump, he actually would have gotten rid of the thing?

Christians: I can’t speculate too much about the politics of this, because I’m not talking to many of the people that make policy, but I know the complaints about the DST, and I don’t dispute them. It was going to be a complicated tax to collect and it was going to be messy in terms of compliance. There’s a lot of uncertainty around the tax and I know there’s always an enormous amount of pressure to reduce all taxes. There’s always going to be that segment of society that sees taxes being thrown down the drain and not as an investment in the society that we want to live in.

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American companies are famous for investing their money on lobbying and not in taxes. They spend their money convincing us that it would be bad for us to tax them, and they can spend a much smaller percentage of their money on lobbying and get us to believe that narrative. And the narrative is that somehow, if we tax Google, Google will go away and we won’t be able to use it. That Google won’t innovate. It’s nonsense, but it’s a story that resonates nonetheless. Was Prime Minister Carney pressured to get rid of the DST? Undoubtedly. And maybe he personally thinks there’s a better way to tax these companies than with an excise tax. I don’t fault him for thinking that. I have even written that there are better ways for Canada to collect this tax than the Digital Services Tax.

PW: I’m going to want you to tell me about these other ways. But I assume that if a Canadian government attempts any of these other ways, then the companies we’re talking about know that all they have to do is hit the Trump button and the pressure will be right back on.

Christians: That’s correct. There are a couple of [alternatives to the DST]. We could, like some other countries have done, redefine the types of income that we subject to withholding taxes in Canada. It’s a complicated technical idea, but basically any payments that go from our advertisers to Google, we could impose a withholding tax simply by expanding a couple of definitions in the Income Tax Act that would then carry over into our treaty. Now, people will push back on that, and say that you’re changing a deal, and people will object to that. And we can have an argument about that, but that possibility exists. That withholding tax is the most straightforward way to do this and we should probably already be thinking about it.

Another one that’s kind of fun, which I really enjoyed learning about when I came to Canada, is Section 19 in the Income Tax Act. So, Canadian advertisers are paying Google now, instead of a Canadian newspaper. Well, Section 19 basically says that whenever someone makes a payment for advertising to a foreign, non-Canadian media, that payment’s not deductible.

Now that provision seems to violate Free Trade rules because it changes, depending on who you make the payment to. But it’s a provision in law. The US objected to it when we adopted it by imposing a reciprocal tax on US advertisers paying Canadian outlets, which doesn’t seem to bother anybody.

PW: But the application of that will be very asymmetrical, right?

Christians: Yes, for sure. And I’ll tell you what the Canadian media noticed when we started paying for digital newspapers online: that they’re not subject to Section 19 — only print and traditional media are subject to this denial of deduction — and Canadian media advocated for this denial of deduction for online publications as well.

All you have to do is look at the wording of Section 19 — and you don’t even have to change the words — and all of a sudden all those payments to Google are not deductible. But if the payments were to Crave, they would be deductible, and if they are to the Globe and Mail, or other Canadian companies, they would be deductible. That is a different kind of advantage for the Canadian competitor that’s a little less susceptible to Trump’s understanding, and a little less susceptible to the politics that surround the Digital Services Tax. But it’s technical. You have to explain it to people, and they don’t believe you. It’s hard to understand it.

PW: Theoretically a two-time central-bank governor could wrap his head around it.

Christians: Yes, I think he could fully understand it, for sure. You’re absolutely right. Will he want to do it, though? I just don’t know.

PW: You said that there are other jurisdictions that continue, today, to successfully tax the web giants. Who are you thinking of?

Christians: Well, Austria’s been doing the Digital Service Tax since the beginning. The UK has the Diverted Profits Tax that they’ve been using. Australia has one that’s been enforced. Austria stands out because I think it was 2017, in Trump’s 1st term, and it was part of a group that Trump threatened to retaliate against, but they just quietly kept going and they’re still collecting it. Part of the narrative is that we, Canada, came too late to the DST party. We just weren’t part of that initial negotiation. We came in too late, and then it was too obvious, and people were able to isolate us from the pack.

PW: My understanding is we’re looking at a hypothetical $7.2 billion in revenue over 5 years. And that represents a shortfall that’s going to have to be found either in other revenue sources or in spending cuts, or in greater debt. Aside from the DST, do you think Canada could use a general overhaul of its tax code?

Christians: Always. Yes, absolutely! Taxes are funny, right? Because they come into every single political battle, and what ends up happening is that politicians treat the Tax Act and the tax system as a present-giving machinery, and not as a clear policy deliverance system.

I am, every day, surprised at how complicated the Canadian tax system is. It’s way too complicated. You can’t even fill out your own tax return in this country. You’re going to make mistakes because it’s just too ridiculously written. It’s too confusing. It’s too messy. So it’s time to take another look. But you need a commission [like the 1962 Carter royal commission on taxation]. You need to be bipartisan. You need to spend money on that. You need to think that the things that you do have long-term effects, and this takes political courage. And basically it requires upsetting a bunch of people and resetting things, and we just might not be at the right time politically to be doing that because people feel vulnerable to volatility from abroad. So it may not be the time to push that.

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Pierre Poilievre – Per Capita, Hardisty, Alberta Is the Most Important Little Town In Canada

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From Pierre Poilievre

The tiny town of Hardisty, Alberta (623 people) moves $90 billion in energy a year—that’s more than the GDP of some countries.

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