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Taxpayer watchdog slams Trudeau gov’t for increasing debt ceiling: ‘Put down the credit card’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland authorized an additional $73 billion in borrowing this fiscal year.

After Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland gave herself and the government the authority to borrow an additional $73 billion this fiscal year, the head of the nation’s leading taxpayer watchdog group said the federal government needs to “put down the credit card” and return to common-sense spending.

Freeland, as per a February 15 cabinet order made under the Financial Administration Act, allowed the extra borrowing to take place.

The government has set “$517 billion to be the maximum aggregate principal amount of money that may be borrowed” before April 1. Before this cabinet order, however, the maximum amount was $444 billion.

Despite Freeland claiming that the increase in borrowing is “in no way a blank cheque,” Canadian Taxpayers Federation federal director Franco Terrazzano said the borrowing needs to end.

“The Trudeau government needs to put down the credit card and pick up some scissors,” Terrazzano told LifeSiteNews.

“The government should be cutting spending and balancing the budget, not racking up more debt for years to come.”

In 2021, Canada’s Parliament raised the federal debt borrowing amount by a whopping 56% under the Borrowing Authority Act. The amount went from $1.168 trillion to $1.831 trillion.

“What it does is set a ceiling for how much the government can spend,” Freeland said at the time.

Terrazzano told LifeSiteNews that the Trudeau government should be cutting spending and balancing the budget, not racking up more debt for years to come.

Terrazzano observed that in the coming year the Trudeau government will be spending “more money on debt interest charges than it sends to the provinces in health transfers.”

“In a handful of years, every penny collected from the GST (Goods and Service Tax) will go toward paying interest on the debt,” he noted.

Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, due to excessive COVID money printing, inflation has skyrocketed.

Last month, LifeSiteNews reported that fast-rising food costs in Canada have led to many people feeling a sense of “hopelessness and desperation” with nowhere to turn for help, according to the Canadian government’s own National Advisory Council on Poverty.

Last year, the Bank of Canada acknowledged that Trudeau’s federal “climate change” programs, which have been deemed “extreme” by some provincial leaders, are indeed helping to fuel inflation.

Terrazzano told LifeSiteNews that Trudeau should “completely scrap his carbon tax,” which is making everything more expensive.

Conservatives blast increased debt

Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MPs have been critical of the raised debt ceiling. “You’re simply saying, ‘Give me a blank cheque and then trust me,’” MP Ed Fast said.

Freeland claimed that the “characterization of the borrowing authority limit as a blank cheque is simply false.”

CPC leader Pierre Poilievre recently asked, “Is there a dollar figure to which she would limit the debt?”

She replied that the government is “mindful that limits exist.”

During a February 13 Senate national finance committee meeting, Budget Officer Yves Giroux noted how Trudeau’s cabinet plans in terms of spending are not clear.

“We don’t know exactly what the government plans on spending or doing in terms of new spending or potential spending,” he said when asked by Senator Elizabeth Marshall if the new borrowing limits are “still realistic.”

Marshall added, “As it stands now, do you think it looks reasonable?”

“It looks sufficient, but the government always wants to give itself some room to maneuver in case there are unforeseen events that require borrowing on short notice,” Giroux replied.

A report from September 5, 2023, by Statistics Canada shows food prices are rising faster than headline inflation at a rate of between 10% and 18% per year.

According to a recent Statistics Canada survey of supermarket prices, Canadians are paying 12% more for carrots, 14% more for hamburger (ground meat), and 27% more for baby formula.

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Mark Carney’s carbon tax plan hurts farmers

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Gage Haubrich

Liberal leadership front-runner Mark Carney recently announced his carbon tax plan and here are some key points.

It’s expensive for Canadians.

It’s even more expensive for farmers.

Carney announced he would immediately remove the consumer carbon tax if he became prime minister.

That sounds like good news, but it’s important to read the fine print.

Carney went on and announced that he would be “integrating a new consumer carbon credit market into the industrial pricing system.” Carney also said he would “improve and tighten” the industrial carbon tax and impose carbon tax tariffs on imports into Canada.

If that sounds like Carney isn’t getting rid of the carbon tax, that’s because he isn’t. He’s trying to hide the costs from Canadians by imposing higher carbon taxes on businesses.

What that means is that Carney’s plan would tax businesses and then businesses will pass those costs onto consumers.

That also means farmers.

Under the current carbon tax, farmers have an exemption from the carbon tax on the gas and diesel they use on their farm. The hidden industrial carbon tax is applied directly to industry. Businesses are forced to pay the carbon tax if they emit above the government’s prescribed limit.

But businesses don’t just swallow those costs. They pass them on. The trucking industry is a great example.

“Due to razor thin margins in the trucking industry, these added costs cannot be absorbed and must be passed on to customers,” said the Canadian Trucking Alliance when analyzing the current Trudeau carbon tax.

The same concept applies to the Carney scheme.

If Carney removes the consumer carbon tax and replaces it with a higher tax on businesses under the hidden industrial carbon tax, that means more costs for farmers.

There isn’t any exemption for farmers under the industrial carbon tax. Oil and gas refineries will be paying a higher carbon tax and they will be forced to pass that cost onto their consumers. Farmers use a lot of fuel.

The pain doesn’t stop there. Farmers also use a lot of fertilizer and Carney’s carbon tax means higher costs for fertilizer plants. Then farmers will be stuck paying more for fertilizer.

Some businesses, like those fertilizer plants, could pack up and move production south. But farmers are still going to need fertilizer. Carney’s plan compounds the pain with carbon tax tariffs.

Fertilizer is only one example. If Canadian farmers need to buy a part to fix equipment that can only come from the U.S., it could be more expensive because of Carney’s carbon tax tariffs.

This will hurt Canadian farmers when they’re buying supplies. But it’ll also hurt when farmers when they go to market. Canadian farmers compete with farmers around the world and majority of them aren’t paying carbon taxes.

Farmers wouldn’t be at a disadvantage because American farmers are smarter or farm better, but because, under Carney’s carbon tax, they would be stuck paying costs competitors don’t have to pay. And farmers know this all too well.

“My competitors to the south of me in the United States do not pay that [carbon] tax, so now my cost goes up and I have no alternative,” said Jeff Barlow, a corn, wheat and soybean farmer in Ontario. “By penalizing me there’s nothing else that I can do but just be penalized.”

And if farmers won’t be the only ones hurt.

Families across Canada are struggling with grocery prices and increasing the cost of production for farmers certainly won’t lower those prices.

Carney says that he wants to cancel the consumer tax because it’s too “divisive.” That statement misses the nail completely and hammers the thumb. Canadians don’t want to get rid of the carbon tax because of perception, they want to get rid of it because it makes life more expensive.

Carney needs to commit to getting rid of carbon taxes, not rebranding the failed policy into something that could end up costing Canadians and farmers even more.

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Do Minimum Wage Laws Accomplish Anything?

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The Audit

David Clinton

All the smart people tell us that, one way or another, increasing the minimum wage will change society. Proponents claim raising pay at the low end of the economy will help low-income working families survive in hyper-expensive communities. Opponents claim that artificially increasing employment costs will either drive employers towards adopting innovative automation integrations or to shut down their businesses altogether. Either way, goes the anti-intervention narrative, there will be fewer jobs available.

Well, what’ll it be? Canadian provinces have been experimenting with minimum wage laws for many years. And since 2021, the federal government has imposed its own rate for employees of all federally regulated industries. There should be plenty of good data out there by now indicating who was right.

The Audit is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Historical records on provincial rates going back decades is available from Statistics Canada. For this research, I used data starting in 2011. Since new rates often come into effect mid-year, I only applied a year’s latest rate to the start of the following year. 2022 itself, for simplicity, was measured by the new federal rate, with the exception of British Columbia who’s rate was $0.10 higher than the federal rate.

My goal was to look for evidence that increasing statutory wage rates impacted these areas:

  • Earnings among workers in full-service restaurants
  • Operating profit margins for full-service restaurants
  • Total numbers of active businesses in the accommodation and food services industries

I chose to focus on the food service industry because it’s particularly dependent on low-wage workers and particularly sensitive to labour costs. Outcomes here should tell us a lot about the impact such government policies are having.

Restaurant worker income is reported as total numbers. In other words, we can see how much all of, say, Manitoba’s workers combined took home in a given year. For those numbers to make sense, I adjusted them using overall provincial populations.

Income in British Columbia and PEI showed a strong correlation to increasing minimum wages. Interestingly, BC has consistently had the highest of all provinces’ minimum wage while PEI’s has mostly hung around the middle of the pack. Besides a weak negative correlation in Saskatchewan, there was no indication that income in other provinces either dropped or grew in sync with increases to the minimum wage.

Nation-wide, by weighting results by population numbers, we got a Pearson coefficient 0.30. That means it’s unlikely that wage rate changes had any impact on take-home income.

Did increases harm restaurants? It doesn’t look like it. I used data measuring active employer businesses in the accommodation and food services industries. No provinces showed any impact on business startups and exits that could be connected to minimum wage laws. Overall, Canada’s coefficient value was 0.29 – again a very weak positive relationship.

So restaurants haven’t been collapsing at epic, extinction-level rates. But do government minimums cause a reduction in their operating profit margins? Apparently not. If anything, they’ve become more profitable!

The nation-wide coefficient between minimum wages and restaurant profitability was 0.88 – suggesting a strong correlation. But how could that be happening? Don’t labour costs make up a major chunk of food service operating expenses? Here are a few possible explanations:

  • Perhaps many restaurants respond to rising costs by increasing their menu prices. This can work out well if market demand turns out to be relatively inelastic and people continue eating out despite higher prices.
  • Higher wages might lead to lower employee turnover, reducing hiring and training costs.
  • A higher minimum wage boosts worker incomes, leading to more disposable income in the economy. Although the flip-side is that we can’t see strong evidence of higher worker income.
  • Higher wages can force unprofitable, inefficient restaurants to close, leaving stronger businesses with higher market share.

In any case, my big-picture verdict on government intervention into private sector wage rates is: thanks but don’t bother. All that effort doesn’t seem to have improved actual incomes on a population scale. At the same time, it also hasn’t driven industries with workers at the low-end of the pay scale to devastating collapse.

But I’m sure it has taken up enormous amounts of public service time and resources that could undoubtedly have been more gainfully spent elsewhere. More important, as the economist Alex Tabarrok recently pointed out, minimum wage laws have been shown to reduce employment for the disabled and measurably increase both consumer prices and workplace injuries.

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