Conservatives Raise EI Premiums–Tax Jobs

As of January 1, 2012,  you will be making less money as Harper’s Employment Insurance Premium Hikes take effect. Workers will see their EI premiums rise 5% of insurable earnings to $1.83 while the maximum insurable pay has been raised to $45,900 from $44,200.

Those who qualify for the maximum over the year will lose $142 off their pay checks and their bosses will have to pay $164.

People will have less money due to this move and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimates that these premium hikes will make hiring more expensive. If we connect the dots, this means fewer jobs will be created.

“Across Canada there are governments that claim they are concerned about jobs and the economy, but at the same time they are taking hundreds of dollars of disposable income out of the pockets of Canadian families,” said CTF federal director Gregory Thomas.

“Between the employer and employee, you have $6,630 of payroll taxes. That’s the price of hiring a Canadian.”

A spokesman for Jim Flaherty argues that the tax relief over the years is sufficient for this to not be painful.

Meanwhile, the corporate tax hike will take another 1.5% cut to 15% as provinces join to cut towards 10% provincially.

This will bring Canada’s combined corporate tax rate down to 25% from 43% in 2000 and put Canadian corporations in a very competitive place in relation to other countries – too bad 97% of jobs in Canada are created by small businesses and that of the remaining 3%, corporations are likely a fraction. But, keep in mind that raising these taxes is detrimental and has worse consequences (it would be like raising taxes more than the amount that you want and then get another greedy grab off of the backs of consumers… us) – even if the economy worked great at those restore points.

Quebec, the most taxed province in North America will see another increase to the QST to make it now 9.5% and will also raise its EI premiums by 5.6%. Health taxes and tuition rates in Quebec will also go up, along with a soon to be increase of 1 cent per liter on gas.

In British Columbia, health taxes will raise by 6.4% for couples and 5.8% for individuals.

It goes to show that no matter how much a government claims to care about jobs, growth, the economy, and the people that ultimately pay the price, tax hikes are always a button away for them and they will soon be defending their financial mismanagements.

The Conservatives call themselves the party of low taxes, but while they didn’t yet raise the GST, like Mulroney did when he introduced it, they have increased EI premiums, an indirect tax grab, and they have taxed income trusts, which is a direct attack on retirement.

The Logic Behind the Conservatives’ Plan for Healthcare Transfers

The Conservatives have announced that cuts will be made to healthcare and let’s face it, it had to happen sooner or later. While the Conservative approach may be against that of the Canadian will and may also align with a stern ideological aspect, the economic logic makes sense.

We are spending a lot of money in healthcare, more so than ever, and will be paying a lot more in about 5 years time. The cost of healthcare is growing faster than the rate of economic growth which if you’re good at math means that the two lines will eventually intersect and lead to a cost over-run that is simply unsustainable and leads to a harsh structural deficit. Now we know that a structural deficit is bad because it means that no matter how well Canada is performing it will always be paying more than it can generate and the debt to GDP ratio will rise and interest payments will increase with every added dollar to debt and eventually we find a Canada that is imploding and in economic chaos. This is strictly based on numbers and numbers don’t lie, draw the two graphs, one with a rate of change of 3 and one with a rate of change of 6, they will certainly intersect and the one with the bigger slope will dominate therein.

We have spent a lot of money into healthcare and as I discussed in a previous article. all we have been doing is turning the tap on a broken hose, waiting for better results and being let down. The system is inefficient and broken and needs change.

The provincial finance ministers may be crying crocodile tears over Harper’s ruling to pair financial funding with economic strength, but this funding scheme is necessary. Even if we scrap everything but healthcare and put all of our resources into healthcare we will still have a lousy system and an eventual budgetary overrun.

By 2019, the federal government will be paying $38 billion, up from $19 billion this year, into the healthcare system. For years, money has been pumped through and how has medical serviced improved for you? Dismally.

The NDP are putting their foot down to the cuts proving simply how illogical and how ineffective their financial methods would be. They claim that even though the economy is only growing at 3% at best, the country should be spending twice as much into healthcare and make the 6% annual increases permanent. Incrementally increase the pressure of the broken hose and tell me at what rate will we see improvement for all of that wasted money.

The NDP would raise taxes which means that you and I would be paying more for a broken system and they believe that the solution to everything is to throw money at it which is simply illogical and irresponsible.

Canada needs healthcare reform, reforms that will tailor services to meet demographic needs, reforms that will slice through administrative and bureaucratic fat in the system, new wings should be for patients, not for bureaucrats! Canadian doctors are among the best paid in the world now, increasing their salary is too much of a burden. It is important that patients have more control over their records and that an online system is created.

We must have this discussion, a discussion the NDP doesn't want to make. The NDP would have you paying much higher taxes and create new spending that is unsustainable and reckless all in the name of their 1900’s ideology.

While the Conservatives may be fundamentally wrong about their take it or leave it approach and while they may be wrong about leaving provinces to figure it all out themselves – which has obviously failed since it is a provincial jurisdiction anyways, but in terms of the logistics of the sustainability of the healthcare system, they are spot on, we cannot afford annual 6% increases in spending, especially not if the increases that we’ve already made didn’t work at all.

“Stephen Harper says we have to slash stable increases to our healthcare funding – but let his wealthy friends keep their tax breaks,” Brian Topp, an NDP leadership candidate who has set out a bold plan to raise everyone’s taxes for his party’s ideology writes. “I think he’s dead wrong.”

The increases are not stable, and never will be because our growth is not more than 6%, and if you think that making growth 6% with tax increases will help the situation, perhaps you should call a plumber to replace the hose for you as you will continue to turn the faucet and get dismal results.

Anyone who believes in the pubic system must wake up and get ready to make reforms because once the system implodes, the public system will be privatized to keep the country afloat. By finding new ways of approaching healthcare, including providing resources for home care, specializing clinics for certain needs and setting new guidelines and cutting administration, the cost of Canadian healthcare can be greatly diminished and the money that does get invested in the system will actually flow through the system properly and not get leaked out to several waste points, and this is how you build and sustain a strong public healthcare system that should put quality first.

Canada’s Healthcare System: Not Underfunded; Inefficient and Mismanaged

Regular users of the Canadian Healthcare system know that something isn’t right. The system is broken, inefficient and mismanaged. It has become expensive and for the causes that it has received greater funding, it has not improved. Our healthcare system still easily deserves a failing grade for wait times, understaffing and overall performance but while some believe that it is due to a lack of funds, the reality remains that the funds are mismanaged and that regardless how much money you throw in the system, it will be wasted and your healthcare won’t improve.

There is a lot of controversy spiraling around the Conservative Government's decision to cut healthcare funding in 5 years. Provincial finance ministers are crying crocodile tears and some people are even afraid that the move will destroy Canadian healthcare.

First, let’s start with an analogy. Say that you are watering a garden. You notice that the pressure coming out of the hose is weak and insufficient. Naturally, you go to the main water supply of the hose and crank it up to a higher state. You continue watering the plants and notice dismal improvement. So you figure that there isn’t enough water and turn the tap to the max. As you continue watering, you are still agitated with the lack of pressure. You go to the tap once again but position yourself differently than before. All of a sudden, you feel your leg get shot with a burst of water. You look down and you are standing in a puddle with a massive leak in your hose. Ultimately, you either need to fix or replace the hose at this point.

Now how does watering the plants with a broken hose link to healthcare? Simple. Water is money, the hose is the system and pressure is the quality. So here is a question for you, if we are spending more money on a system that wastes money along the way, how much of the new funding will actually go to healthcare? And how will this increased funding help improve the overall quality of a broken system?

This view is shared by two thirds of Canadians: The problem isn’t funding, it’s efficient management.

If we look at some cases of what people had to say about the system, we realize that there are some real issues in healthcare.

Take Emily Nicolas, age 29, and a private calculus tutor, she used to say that we had a good healthcare system. After getting a stress fracture on her hip which was not properly diagnosed, she experienced an 8 year odyssey through the system. Nicolas endured 4 operations, including the replacement of her right hip, and formal physiotherapy which essentially weren’t needed and could have been done without.

“It’s not very sensible or innovative,” she said. “There’s too much focus on more diagnostics, more tests, when listening and communication could diminish the need for some of those.”

Now, the word mediocre is her overall description.

I can relate to her, while I did not have an injury like hers, I grew up in and out of the hospital and was very weak towards viruses. The wait times were awful, you are waiting in a room where you are surrounded by other sick kids whose germs are fresh in the air. Then you finally see a doctor 6 hours later, I guess I was one of the lucky ones, and they send you away with cold medication or with a diagnosis of mono, which were never the cases for me. I always ended up returning the next day in worst shape than I had entered and wait the long wait again to see a different doctor who would send me to the X-ray section. In the X-ray section, I would have to wait a few more hours before they finally take my X-ray and then I get the diagnosis that I should have gotten the first time.

The system is broken, Canadians know it, but, unlike the Conservatives, 77% believe in the public system. The public system does need a cleanup and some reorganization and efficiency checks, but it in itself is not the problem.

Increasingly, inefficiency is being seen as the main problem. Kevin Leonard, 54, a professor at Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, has lived for 4 decades with Crohn’s disease. When he went to get an ultrasound a few years ago for his abdomen, a frustrating encounter fueled his belief that patients need better access to their medical records. His radiologist folded a report on his exam and stapled it 17 times to hide his results until he saw a family doctor.

“It’s very, very ineffective the way it runs today,” he said. “It’s based on this mindset that’s rampant throughout health care that the patient is either not mature enough or does not have the right to get access to their own information until a doctor has said it's okay for you to have that.”

A solution that Leonard believes in is an online database which patients can use to track their health.

A friend of mine who lived in Ontario cited the events of a London-based hospital that should surprise many. The hospital underwent renovations and added a new wing. Usually, this is a good thing because it means more doctors, more beds, and better quality care. Once the renovations were finished, she investigated the new wing to find that it was solely for administrative offices and that no new beds or equipment was added. The renovations were on the taxpayer’s bill and likely came up to $1 million.

It goes to show that you can spend as much money on healthcare as you want, but if the system is broken, you are essentially flushing that money down the toilet.

Government of Canada ordered to Pay Jean Chretien Over Sponsorship Case

The election of 2006 was an election where the Conservatives placed repeated attacks against the Liberal Party for something called ad scam. The attacks were effective enough to get them into power and to slowly finish off the party. While many Canadians who bought the propaganda have declared and condemned the Liberal party as corrupt, evidence suggests that there was no link to Jean Chretien or even the Liberal Party.

 

Helena Guergis sues PM Harper and Conservative Party

Helena Guergis is suing Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada over defamation and an alleged conspiracy plan to keep her out of Parliament.

 

Reasons why Canada’s Management System Needs Rethinking

Canadians pay a lot of money every year. They pay a GST and PST or HST, they pay income taxes, they pay payroll taxes, they pay municipal property taxes and there is a tax for almost everything in Canada. These taxes overlap and soon we all find ourselves struggling to balance our budgets and wondering why money disappears so fast. Meanwhile, government officials tell us that they are doing their best to manage budgets which in most cases are in deep deficits and are leading up to huge debts and budget run offs. The money that we pay is supposed to go toward infrastructure and the services we count on and every time our taxes are raised, there is a promise for better service. Ironically, as taxes increase throughout the country, the quality of our roads and infrastructure, our education and healthcare, and the safety net that we are obliged to fund are all deteriorating.  As we speak, public servants with inflated salaries and perks are going on spending sprees and having their unions try to hold taxpayers as hostages. As we speak, government officials are wasting our money and in some cases, even allegedly funding organized crime. Government and bureaucracy in Canada: hand in hand, putting their hands in the public piggy bank, it is time for change.

Government Officials Take Tax Payers for a Ride

Peter Mackay came under fire again this week as his hotel spending came to light and it isn’t pretty.  Mackay wasn’t alone, information has surfaced that a bureaucrat in charge of managing Aboriginal finances has been taking tax payers for a ride as well.

Quebec’s NDP Wave Died Out–Harris-Decima Poll

A new Harris-Decima poll suggests that the NDP is now tied with the Bloc Quebecois for first place in the province. At 26% a piece, the NDP has dropped significantly by 16 points since the May election. The NDP losses were distributed at 3 for the Bloc Quebecois, 1 for the Conservatives, 5 for Greens and 6 for the Liberals which shows the Liberals and Greens as the big gainers in Quebec to propel them to second/third place.

What Goes Around Comes Around

Jack Layton’s last attack in the May 2011 was aimed squarely at Michael Ignatieff and his Liberals. Touting that the NDP had a superior attendance record, the NDP managed to aid the Harper Conservatives in an attempt to hammer a nail on the Liberal coffin. The NDP are having a leadership race and all of them are uninspiring and on top of that, they are all among the worst parliamentarians in terms of attendance.

Conservatives Scramble with Budgeting

There is a $10 billion average difference between estimated structural budget balance forecasts between the Conservatives and budget watchdog Kevin Page.

Chretien: Gun Registry, Kyoto and Wheat Board are Dismantled… What’s Next?

Former Liberal PM Jean Chretien is warning Liberals that the Gun Registry, Kyoto Accord, and Wheat Board may just be the beginning in a Conservative ideological rampage which would change the face of Canada.