[Discussion] Canadian Politics Catch-All

A place to discuss Canadian politics and more general political topics through a Canadian lens.

The progressive is looking at his social policies, not his economic policies. I do not know nearly enough about that to make a statement one way or another.

BushPilot wrote:
Roke wrote:

I like the idea of increasing the GST. Between the rebate and the zero-rating of groceries it's a pretty progressive tax and VATs have a lower economic cost than other taxes. I wish the NDP would embrace using an increase in the GST to fund some big, beneficial program but maybe that's a bad move politically.

I really don't know much about taxation so I'm a bit out of my depth here, but isn't it a bit of a stretch to call any sales tax progressive? A tax on consumption seems inherently regressive. Providing meager GST rebates and not charging it on some basic needs like groceries and residential housing helps offset this, but it seems to me that a low income family still pays a far larger proportion of their income (particularly that portion not used to pay for basic needs) than a wealthy family.

Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway all have much higher VATs than Canada and I wouldn't consider their tax systems particularly regressive because they have a high VAT.

Whether the tax is progressive comes down to how it is implemented (it's the same thing with user fees). Carbon taxes can be quite regressive, but the way Alberta went about things with their rebates avoided that problem.

On the GST/HST itself, households spend a lower proportion of income on groceries as you move higher up the income scale so the zero-rating is pretty big there. If it's not progressive enough as it is, increasing the rebate is the smart way to improve things.

It's also more difficult for the well off to hire tax advisers to come up with ways to avoid paying the GST. A Chiropractor, dentist, or lawyer and the like can take advantage of small-business tax rates and the ridiculous tax-sheltering granted to Canadian Controlled Private Corporations. It's not as easy engage in legal tax avoidance when you're buying goods and services.

The article notes:Peterson also wants a flat 15 per cent personal income tax rate, across the board.

And I don't like this at all. Flattening the rates without getting rid of almost every non-refundable income tax credit makes things a hell of a lot less fair and doesn't have the simplicity benefits of an actual flat-tax. People's misconceptions about tax brackets worry me, and the Liberals sure took advantage of it with their "middle-class" tax cut, so an actual flat tax has some appeal to me but I come back to the appearance of fairness problem.

The lack of GST for groceries and residential housing helps ensure something a bit more progressive on the lower-income end of the spectrum, but it does little on the other end. That is, lower and middle income people likely spend a larger proportion of their income (after groceries and residential housing) on things taxed by GST than do high-income folks. A family making 200k is almost certainly saving/investing a greater proportion of their income (and thus not paying GST on it) than a family making 50k. This is why I reckon that an increase of GST rates is regressive.

It seems to me that part of what offsets the inherently regressive nature of a VAT is the progressive nature of income tax.

Couple a GST hike with Peterson's proposed 15% flat tax rate for everyone and it seems to me you've got a big tax increase for lower incomes and a huge tax break for higher incomes. His social policies seem much more reasonable than most of what I've heard from the other Conservative candidates, but I'm with you in that I definitely can't get behind his proposed tax scheme at all. I'm all for simplifying the tax code and closing loopholes, but oversimplification is not the way to go.

Roke wrote:

People's misconceptions about tax brackets worry me, and the Liberals sure took advantage of it with their "middle-class" tax cut

I'm curious about what you mean here. What are people's misconceptions, and how did the Liberals take advantage of them?

BushPilot wrote:
Roke wrote:

People's misconceptions about tax brackets worry me, and the Liberals sure took advantage of it with their "middle-class" tax cut

I'm curious about what you mean here. What are people's misconceptions, and how did the Liberals take advantage of them?

A lot of people still seem to think that the tax bracket they're "in" is the one applied to all their income when in fact income tax rates are applied on marginal income. The Liberal rate cut from 25 to 20.5% has negligible benefits for an individual earning the median income (about $45k) and the greatest beneficiaries of the cut are actually individuals earning $92,000-203,000 .

It's not the worst tax policy in the world, but it's really more of an upper-middle/lower-upper income tax cut.

BushPilot wrote:

The lack of GST for groceries and residential housing helps ensure something a bit more progressive on the lower-income end of the spectrum, but it does little on the other end. That is, lower and middle income people likely spend a larger proportion of their income (after groceries and residential housing) on things taxed by GST than do high-income folks. A family making 200k is almost certainly saving/investing a greater proportion of their income (and thus not paying GST on it) than a family making 50k. This is why I reckon that an increase of GST rates is regressive.

It seems to me that part of what offsets the inherently regressive nature of a VAT is the progressive nature of income tax.

Couple a GST hike with Peterson's proposed 15% flat tax rate for everyone and it seems to me you've got a big tax increase for lower incomes and a huge tax break for higher incomes. His social policies seem much more reasonable than most of what I've heard from the other Conservative candidates, but I'm with you in that I definitely can't get behind his proposed tax scheme at all. I'm all for simplifying the tax code and closing loopholes, but oversimplification is not the way to go.

Going back to the GST its not all that regressive because of: GST/HST Tax credit

Only argument really is do people with sub 45,000ish incomes really get enough back.

I use to get it then I got 'rich' and the drop off is kinda abrupt. Not really feeling that much richer TBH

"If we don't eliminate/reduce business taxes, they'll just go south".
"Making 15% flat tax means that the wealthiest people will for sure pay 15% instead of using loopholes to avoid it."

So, um, why wouldn't they just go south like the businesses again?

Because rich people don't like the Mad Max universe that the south is becoming?

So the justice system's kind of in crisis:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...

59 judicial vacancies, 10/17 committees that screen candidates for federally-appointed courts are vacant, and a man accused of murder had his charges stayed because of the unreasonable delay in getting to trial.

The current government's been in power for 18 months and are only just now calling a meeting with the provincial justice ministers to address the issues.

But meetings solve everything!

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this story. I read that globe article and still came away not understanding why these vacancies exist. What's causing the delays in new appointments? What changes have been proposed to speed things up?

I'd like to understand more about what's actually going on and less about the rhetoric being strewn about.

Kevin O'Leary drops out of Conservative leadership race, will endorse Maxime Bernier

Well I didn't see that coming. Bernier is already doing extremely well in the polls, so with O'Leary's endorsement it seems likely that he will win next month.

Still not sure how I feel about Bernier but I'm glad to see O'Leary gone.

Well that's a relief.

The BC Election is tonight with the polls closing at 8PM PST. It's going to be a close race with the NDP projected to win the popular vote and the Liberals projected to win a majority government. To no one's surprise the NDP are pushing for electoral reform if they win.

I live in Ontario so I only have a shallow understanding of the race, but I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Fingers crossed for an NDP win, but it doesn't look like it's gonna happen
I'm so sick of Christy Clark and our stupid not-actually-liberal-in-any-way Liberals

Here's hoping the Liberals don't win enough seats to stay in government. Ontario and BC have been neck-in-neck in the Canada's Worst Government race the past few years but BC's governing seems malicious to me while Ontario's is merely incompetent with the usual political grifting.

Oh please... You're kidding yourself. Quebec perennially has the worst government by a disastrous margin. Ontario and BC can vie for second.

This is going to be down to the wire. The Liberals are currently leading in 42 seats and the NDP leading in 41 seats.

Tyops wrote:

Oh please... You're kidding yourself. Quebec perennially has the worst government by a disastrous margin. Ontario and BC can vie for second.

Quebec's been fine since Couillard's become premier.

Looks like BC's going to be in the balance until the final count is done. The potential for a minority government is exciting in a "anything can happen!" kind of way. Hopefully the Greens and NDP can work together to turf Clark if the Liberals haven't won any more seats.

It did seem like the NDP were gunning for Wells' Fourth Rule late in the campaign.

I have a dream that electoral reform will be pushed through by a minority government, whose ability to govern depends on a deal with another party - all of whom believe in electoral reform and make it a deal-breaker. "We'll make a coalition with you if you push electoral reform. Otherwise, we'll all form a coalition together and push it through ourselves."

Sadly, that's what it looked like was bound to happen in the UK under Cameron's minority with Clegg as Deputy PM, until the Lib Dems just wrote that off, so I'm less than hopeful about it.

I don't know what the feeling is in BC, but the near-riots during town halls in the US right now say to me that people are pissed off at the system in general, and more engaged than they have been in a long time. In Ontario, there are rumblings of the same, and Trudeau's broken promise on electoral reform has not gone over well in the echo chamber of my Facebook feed. I hope that the NDP and Greens are willing and able to push this point of principle.

Feegle wrote:

I don't know what the feeling is in BC, but the near-riots during town halls in the US right now say to me that people are pissed off at the system in general, and more engaged than they have been in a long time. In Ontario, there are rumblings of the same, and Trudeau's broken promise on electoral reform has not gone over well in the echo chamber of my Facebook feed. I hope that the NDP and Greens are willing and able to push this point of principle.

I don't think the comparison to the US makes sense when it comes to people pissed off at the election rules, they're very different systems. We don't have the partisan gerrymandering, electing everyone from dogcatcher to judge, and unlimited political donations aren't fundamental constitutional rights here. There are problems and issues Canadians can justifiably be upset with and a broken, impossible to follow through on electoral reform promise is one of them but a change in voting system isn't a panacea.

I wonder whether the BC NDP regrets not campaigning in favour of Gordon Campbell's electoral reform referendum 12 years ago.Too often it seems like parties only support electoral reform to the extent they think it will help them in the next election. I guess that supposes that every NDP or Green voter's second choice would be the other non-Liberal party and there's no evidence to support that. It seems like there was a decent shift from Liberal to Green in BC yesterday:

https://twitter.com/DonRinald/status...

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C_d78s1UMAAFYL9.jpg)

Roke wrote:
Feegle wrote:

I don't know what the feeling is in BC, but the near-riots during town halls in the US right now say to me that people are pissed off at the system in general, and more engaged than they have been in a long time. In Ontario, there are rumblings of the same, and Trudeau's broken promise on electoral reform has not gone over well in the echo chamber of my Facebook feed. I hope that the NDP and Greens are willing and able to push this point of principle.

I don't think the comparison to the US makes sense when it comes to people pissed off at the election rules, they're very different systems. We don't have the partisan gerrymandering, electing everyone from dogcatcher to judge, and unlimited political donations aren't fundamental constitutional rights here. There are problems and issues Canadians can justifiably be upset with and a broken, impossible to follow through on electoral reform promise is one of them but a change in voting system isn't a panacea.

Different systems, I agree, but the malaise with the current electoral process is the symptom of both. In both nations, people feel disenfranchised, and that they vote doesn't actually make a difference, or that they aren't actually being represented in their capitals. In one country it's because of gerrymandering, or big money, or whatever the hell is going on down there, but here, I think it's often the "I must vote for the lesser of two evils because that third party doesn't stand a chance in my riding." I'm a big fan of proportional representation, because I believe that minority or coalition governments actually have to dialogue with their opponents in order to get anything done. But even instant runoff would be better than what we've got.

Roke wrote:

I wonder whether the BC NDP regrets not campaigning in favour of Gordon Campbell's electoral reform referendum 12 years ago.Too often it seems like parties only support electoral reform to the extent they think it will help them in the next election. I guess that supposes that every NDP or Green voter's second choice would be the other non-Liberal party and there's no evidence to support that. It seems like there was a decent shift from Liberal to Green in BC yesterday.

This right here is why I like proportional representation. I don't want anyone to have to settle for their second choice; I'd like everyone to feel that they have a representative in parliament that they can connect with. My riding is Liberal, but their party policy means that they're not going to push forward my agenda on (say) green energy. Why can't I call an NDP MP who I know is more likely to listen and get my voice heard? PR would fix that.

I know, it's a pipe dream, and it's got its own problems. But a system like FPTP where 37% of the popular vote allows one party to function essentially dictatorially is fundamentally broken, as evidenced by the political events of the last 10 years in Canadian governance.

Feegle wrote:

This right here is why I like proportional representation. I don't want anyone to have to settle for their second choice; I'd like everyone to feel that they have a representative in parliament that they can connect with. My riding is Liberal, but their party policy means that they're not going to push forward my agenda on (say) green energy. Why can't I call an NDP MP who I know is more likely to listen and get my voice heard? PR would fix that.

The thing I really don't like about PR systems is it significantly reduces the ability of the electorate to hold the incumbent government accountable when they can swap coalition partners. Single Transferable Vote is more appealing to me because of that but I (unfoundedly) worry it would lead to bland parties with little difference between them.

But the process of making a change to the electoral system matters more to me than the actual system. I'm fine with FPTP, PR, STV - they all have their upsides and downsides, but changing the fundamental way we interact with our elective representatives should be done or confirmed in an inclusive manner. I think New Zealand got things spot on in that regard.

But wouldn't a bland party be the most likely to be pretty good... well, at least "not terrible."

Hooray for... eh... s'alright, I guess.

Wink_and_the_Gun wrote:

But wouldn't a bland party be the most likely to be pretty good... well, at least "not terrible."

Hooray for... eh... s'alright, I guess. :)

It would certainly beat someone like Ezra Levant deciding "hey, now I can get elected to parliament and be Canada's Nigel Farage."

Yeah, that's where I'm coming from. Something like PR is a double-edged sword because any extremist party can get some representation without too much difficulty. On the other hand, it's near-impossible for an extremist party to part of a government coalition.

The invented Chinese names of the BC 2017 political campaign — ranked

5. George Heyman (NDP, Vancouver-Fairview) — 賀佐治

This would be a pretty unremarkable, straight-up-the-line transliteration, except that 佐治 (Zuo Zhi), a common transliteration of George, also means “governs on the left.” And, well…

I'm starting to miss Harper already.

This is the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
IMAGE(https://scontent-yyz1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/18699981_10155390388443559_2854361199054837393_n.jpg?oh=87106142a836333e0fa29ec7977201fd&oe=59B24FA8)

It's a race to the bottom in North American politics! We'd just have to hope that Mexico is able to show us the way back to sanity.