Doctors divided
Cape Breton physician speaks out in support of tax changes
A Cape Breton physician who has supported the federal government’s proposed tax changes has been removed from the board of directors of Doctors Nova Scotia.
The provincial organization isn’t saying why Dr. Monika Dutt was ousted from the board at a regular meeting last week, and Dutt said that following legal advice she also can’t comment on the reason she was voted out.
But some doctors, including Dutt, say the proposed tax changes are creating deep divisions among physicians across the country.
Most oppose the proposed tax changes, which are intended to get more tax revenue from wealthy professionals and incorporated business owners.
In September, Dutt used social media to promote an open letter to federal Finance Minister
Bill Morneau signed by nearly 500 doctors across the country generally supporting the federal government’s proposals.
Dutt said she faced a backlash from colleagues after she went public on the issue.
“I did, and many others did, primarily I’d say on social media, but also I was confronted in a grocery store in Sydney by a physician who didn’t agree with my position,” she said on Tuesday. “So I’d say it was a hostile environment in the social media world as well as occasionally in person.”
The open letter said despite the lack of benefits, significant debt from medical school and in some cases overhead costs of running a medical practice, doctors are still in the top five per cent of wage earners in the country. But income sprinkling, passive investment income savings and capital gains provisions are not available to all doctors, such as those who do not incorporate or those who are single parents.
While generally supporting the proposed changes, the doctors also called on the federal government to reassess the entire tax system and come up with a savings plan that helps all doctors. They also called on the feds to work with provinces on health, parental and pension benefits, and to find ways to lower the cost of physician education and training.
Initially, Morneau said the government intended to limit income sprinkling, which allows incorporated businesses to pay family members and lower the company’s taxable income, reduce the amount of passive investment income companies are allowed to save and remove capital gains exemptions.
However, there are indications the government will back off those provisions that hurt farmers.
Dr. Craig Stone, an anesthesiologist in Sydney, said that is simply further evidence of a divide-and-conquer strategy by the federal government, which he said is pitting salaried professionals against fee-for-service doctors who have additional costs and no benefits.
“The Liberal government is playing the politics of division, dividing the salaried group against the incorporated group,” he said Tuesday, just before making a presentation to the Senate standing committee on national finance.
The committee is holding consultation sessions across the country and is expected to report back to Parliament next month with recommendations.
If fee-for-service doctors can’t reduce their tax burden through incorporation, income sprinkling, passive investments and capital gains exemptions, Stone said, they won’t be able to afford to carry on.
Stone said like the Canadian Medical Association, which represents tens of thousands of doctors, he remains opposed to the proposed federal tax changes.
Dutt represents a “very small” group of doctors, he said.
Dutt, a family physician in Cape Breton, is also a director at the Broadbent Institute, a social democratic think tank named after former federal NDP leader Ed Broadbent, and is past-chairman of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and was chief medical officer of health for the former Cape Breton district health authority.
She is also a former provincial NDP candidate and is currently executive director of Upstream, a non-profit aimed at improving people’s health before they need access to health care.