Budgets are about choices.

And with middle-class Canadians working harder to make ends meet, Stephen Harper had an opportunity to give them some much needed relief.

But instead, he chose to increase payroll taxes that individuals and their employers pay by $19 billion. At the same time, Stephen Harper announced $5 billion in new spending to cut corporate taxes, a third of which will go exclusively to the big banks and big oil companies. Earlier this week the Royal Bank announced a $1.5 billion 3 month profit. And TD reported they doubled their profit to $1.3 billion. Do you think these people need  government help?

Harper’s budget means billions of dollars in tax breaks for those who need help the least, and billions in new costs on hard-working, recession-weary Canadians who need a break the most. Preparing for the future? The Conservative spending plan tabled this week shows a 43% increase in the budget for prison construction, from $230 million in 09/10 to $329 million in 10/11.

Canadian Restaurant and Food Services Association

Hidden in today’s budget is the government’s plan to significantly raise employment insurance rates – which means employers will be paying a much higher price to create new jobs during the economic recovery. Higher EI premiums will cost the restaurant and foodservice industry nearly $30 million a year starting in 2011.

For detailed review and in-depth analysis follow this link  The 2010 Federal Budget: Canadian Labour Congress Analysis | Canadian Labour Congress

The following message from the CUPE pension committee to the Air Canada flight attendants asks that they contact their MPs to have the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act amended to place under-funded pension plans ahead of all other creditors in the event of bankruptcy. The document is self-explanatory. We strongly urge our members to do the same according to the following information and instructions.

The Air Canada Pionairs, a group of retirees, have recently launched a campaign to lobby the federal government to change the federal Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to allow for pension plans to be given preferred status in the event of a bankruptcy (i.e. be put at the top of the creditor list).

Despite Air Canada’s improved fortunes, if Air Canada were ever to declare bankruptcy and the pension plans were to be wound up, we as pension plan members would be rated lower than other creditors. As a result, the pension plans would have less money to distribute to plan members on a wind up than if we were rated at the top of the creditor list. While pension fund investment values have increased significantly since last summer’s memorandum of understanding regarding the pension, low interest rates, which the plan’s funding valuations are based on, have minimized the benefit to the solvency ratios which currently stand around 76%. We urge you all to protect your pension plan by participating in this important campaign. You can do so by e- mailing or writing your Member of Parliament and asking for their support, ideally before March 3rd, 2010, which is when Parliament reconvenes. We suggest that you send your e-mail to following individuals:

• To: Prime Minister Stephen Harper – pm@pm.gc.ca
• To: Industry Minister Tony Clement – ClemeT@parl.gc.ca
• Cc: MP Ted Menzies – Menzies.T@parl.gc.ca
• Cc: Hon. Jim Flaherty – FlaheJ@parl.gc.ca
• Cc: Hon. Diane Ablonczy – AblonD@parl.gc.ca
• Cc: your MP

To find the e-mail address for your MP click on the appropriate link on the right hand side of this page or copy the following to your internet browser and press enter:

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx?Menu=HOC

For the Subject line in your e-mail you could write Pension Reform. Below is a sample letter which you may wish to use.

Sample Letter

Date

Subject: Pension Reform

As an employee of Air Canada, whose pension is in jeopardy due to the Company’s financial status, I am deeply concerned that the Federal Government has taken no action to amend the Bankruptcy Insolvency Act (BIA) to give preferred status to the pension plan deficits resulting from pension plan wind ups and liquidation under the BIA.

To ensure that Air Canada and other employees do not suffer an impoverished future, it is paramount that the BIA be amended to give preferred status to pension plan members who would be the major creditors to the Company. Please enact revisions to the BIA so as to provide adequate security to those who cannot protect themselves. Your prompt response and acknowledgement that these issues will be addressed in the Budget speech of March 3, 2010 would be greatly appreciated and will enable me to continue to support the efforts your government is undertaking.

Respectfully,

Name:

Address:

Phone No.:

| FEBRUARY 23, 2010

In 2007, the Harper government gleefully boasted about how quickly it managed to negotiate the U.S.-Canada Softwood Lumber Agreement. What it failed to mention was the deal’s disastrous impact on Canada’s forestry sector, one that has cost taxpayers $1 billion and counting, and thousands of Canadian jobs.

Last week Harper and his team were at it again. This time it was the agreement with the U.S. on how to handle the “Buy American” provisions in their stimulus legislation. While the Conservatives have been touting their apparent success in having Canadian companies exempted from such regulations, the reality is that there are grave concerns about what the deal means for job losses in Canada.

Canadian negotiators, along with their staff in Ottawa and Washington, worked around the clock on what is seen by many as the most significant indirect change to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) since Canada signed the treaty. The results of these negotiations leave Canada even more vulnerable. It is simply unacceptable for the Harper government to proceed without first bringing the deal to the House of Commons for debate and a vote.

After numerous delays, the final draft of the agreement was signed just a few days before the close of bidding for U.S. stimulus funding. That left Canadian companies with next to no time to bid for projects worth up to $5 billion, with no guarantee that they would even win any of that business. Some 98 per cent of the stimulus money had already been committed leaving Canadian companies with largely symbolic potential to bid on a few remaining contracts, and no real mechanism to enforce Canadian access.

In return, Canadian provinces and municipalities are now obliged to provide U.S. companies access to their infrastructure projects for a full 20 months — until September 2011. Those projects are valued at a staggering $25 billion. Thankfully, in both Manitoba and Nova Scotia, the provincial NDP government in power took steps to protect certain sectors of their economies, as did some other provinces.

Provinces and municipalities rely on these infrastructure projects to create jobs locally and stimulate economic development. Having to turn more and more of them over to American companies risks our ability to pursue effective economic policies.

There is not enough evidence to assess the deal’s impact. There are few numbers, no projections on potential job losses, and no evaluation of just what the economic impact will be on Canadian businesses and families.

To give just one example, the agreement does nothing to take into account Quebec’s desire to ensure workplaces and businesses can operate in French; the impact of such drastic indirect changes to NAFTA will be felt in Quebec or in other provinces.

These negotiations were supposed to protect Canadian suppliers from the U.S. Buy American Act, and other similar provisions in U.S. legislation. But the final deal provides no such protection, only a weak process for registering Canada’s concern over future Buy American initiatives.

And with no Buy Canada Act of our own (such as the one New Democrats have introduced in the House of Commons), our country has been left without the leverage that Americans- and every other industrial economy — have developed in order to ensure jobs here at home.

Of course, none of these flaws can be adequately debated or resolved because the Harper government has prorogued Parliament. Prime Minister Harper has locked the doors of accountability and transparency, sidestepping the Parliamentary scrutiny he advocated not so long ago.

In 2004, Harper, along with the other opposition leaders, wrote a letter to then-Prime Minister Paul Martin calling on him to be more transparent and open. “This reflects our belief and determination that issues that should be voted on, such as international treaties … should be submitted to Parliament,” Harper said at the time.

Then in the 2006 Speech from the Throne, the Harper government promised that “significant international treaties will be submitted to votes in Parliament.” The Conservatives have yet to deliver fully on that promise. This is their chance.

This indirect change to NAFTA deserves such treatment. While it may not technically be a new treaty, it is a significant addition to one and needs to be debated by Canada’s elected representatives.

If Parliament were sitting, we could be questioning the government in the House, holding committee hearings and calling expert witnesses to provide answers to many of the questions that municipalities, companies and the public are asking.

But Parliament isn’t sitting because Mr. Harper decided he had more pressing matters to attend to, such as completing negotiations, in secret, on a trade deal that could have a profound, damaging and long-term impact on the Canadian economy.

Only time will tell just how much this latest Conservative debacle will cost us.

Peter Julian, MP (Burnaby-New Westminster)
NDP International Trade Critic

But they’ve stopped acting like it, which is why it’s time for tax laws to make them pay their share.

By Murray Dobbin, 22 February 2010, TheTyee.ca

Full article and comments: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/02/22/DobbinRichTaxes/

As we approach budget day on March 4th, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page tells us we are headed for structural deficits in the medium term and even larger ones in the long term. Meanwhile, Stockwell Day, the president of the Treasury Board, tells us there are bleak times ahead. The issue of taxes is being forced onto the political stage.

There are many elements to this story: the tens of billions in revenue lost yearly to ten years of tax-cutting, the upcoming additional corporate tax cuts, the regressive nature of our personal income tax system, tax havens and finally the lack of an inheritance tax in this country.

There has been a growing problem in this latter category over the past 25 years. It can be summed up this way: The rich are no longer with us. As Canadian social programs and municipal infrastructures erode, as the gap between rich and poor widens to 1920s levels, and as we face huge deficits into the foreseeable future, wealthy Canadians have long absented themselves from any responsibility for the country or the crisis it faces.

The rich and super-rich seem completely oblivious to the plight of their fellow citizens. How else can we explain the obscene pay packages of CEOs and other executives? They are the product of upper-class exceptionalism — the normal rules of citizenship do not apply to them. They do not have to consider the fate of their country so they hide their money in foreign banks — with no guilt — to evade taxes. They are simply entitled to everything they have — and to even more if they can get it. Class divisions in Canada have been growing now for at least 25 years, to the point that we seem to be entering a new era of feudalism. This is a part of the crisis in democracy that almost never gets talked about.

The secession of the successful

Robert Reich, who was the secretary of labour under Bill Clinton, once called it the “secession of the successful.” This abandonment of the national project is due, in large part, to a quarter century of corporate globalization — a process that relegated nation-building to the historical dustbin and created a global class of super-rich individuals who identified with each other.

They are symbolized by the corporate executive class and could not make an argument that their skills are worth anywhere near their pay packages. They are not supermen. Their success has nothing to do with talent or ability — it is purely about class privilege and the drive to create a huge gulf between the new nobility and everyone else. The primary role they see for government is to protect their property rights against all incursions by an activist state.

The rich have seen their wealth increase dramatically and their tax rates go down radically in the past 20 years. In the early 20th century, the top one percent of income earners took home 15 percent of total national income. That declined to 11 percent after WWII when nation-building — and the social equality that was integral to it — was the focus of democratic government. By 1980, their share had fallen to 7.5 percent. Then it started to climb again. As of 2008, we are back to the early 20th century where the top one percent take home nearly 14 percent of national income — nearly twice the share they had 30 years ago.

According to a Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives study by Lars Osberg: “Between 1992 and 2004, the average taxable income of the top 0.1 percent of families rose from $1,270,000 to $2,650,000 (in 2007 dollars).” By 2008, the average income of the top 0.1 percent had risen a further $710,000 — reaching a total of $3,360,000.

In terms of accumulated wealth, the picture is even more stark. The median net worth of the wealthiest ten percent of Canadian families increased 35 percent between 1984-1999. They gained a further 65 percent from 1999-2005, while the wealth of the bottom 50 percent of Canadians saw no gains since 1984.

Much of this staggering wealth comes as a result of a tax system that has been getting less progressive since the 1970s — particularly since 2000. In the days of nation-building, Canada had a tax system that was amongst the most progressive anywhere. According to a 1995 article by Roger Smith, “In 1949, PIT [personal income tax] rates ranged from 15 to 84 percent and there were 17 brackets. In 1994, the range was 26.35 to 46.4 percent and there were 3 brackets.” In 2009, there were four federal brackets: 15 percent, 22 percent, 26 percent, and 29 percent on an income over $126,264.

Throughout the ten year period of huge tax cuts, both personal and corporate ($100 billion over five years by Paul Martin — and a further $100 billion, including GST, by the Harper government) there has been an aggressive rejection of any criticism of this gutting of the federal purse. Anyone talking about tax increases would expect to be immediately attacked and ridiculed.

New voices for tax increases

But there may be real changes in the wind. Canada now faces huge decisions about its future and its fiscal viability as a nation state. And for the first time in 30 years, some very unusual suspects are calling for tax increases. Perhaps the most prominent (because it unleashed a nasty attack from the Prime Minister’s Office) was Ed Clark, the CEO of TD Bank.

He told a business meeting in Florida that Stephen Harper was not listening to those on Bay Street who were telling him the best way to get rid of a large deficit is through tax increases — on people just like him. And it wasn’t just Clark. He was reporting on the judgement of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the voice of the 150 largest corporations in Canada.

The head of the CCCE, John Manley, had also made the same point earlier. And two high-powered experts — C. Scott Clark, former deputy minister of finance and Peter DeVries, former director of fiscal policy at the Department of Finance — wrote a Globe article in December calling for tax increases. Even the political elite seems to be getting in on this dramatic shift. Historian Michael Bliss, a man with impeccable conservative credentials, penned an op-ed piece in the Globe entitled “Taxing the über-rich would reduce the deficit and social resentment.”

Are the corporate and political elite finally getting it? Or are they worried about potential social unrest? Are they awakening from their wealth-accumulation binge with a political hangover and recognizing that it actually matters whether they have to step over destitute people on their way to the opera? Do the CEOs now, finally, realize that they need more than tax cuts to make them competitive — that with eroding Medicare, bridges falling down, science being gutted, workers going untrained and disposable income for the rest of us on a steep downward slope, their future prosperity might be impacted?

It’s almost too much to hope for — so it’s not “change we can believe in” quite yet. But what the hell. If no one else is going to take the lead on increasing taxes for the rich, I’ll follow Ed.

Murray Dobbin’s “State of the Nation” column now appears every other Monday in The Tyee and on Rabble, and he also publishes articles on his blog