More taxes are not the answer

For the past several months we have been focused on the insane federal tax proposals and identifying how they will harm small business in this province and country. It is an unfortunate distraction because the real problem, that all levels of government have, is not the amount of tax that they collect, but the amount of money they spend.

Every business owner and every individual person is willing to pay a fair share of municipal, provincial and federal tax. What grates at us, though, is how inefficiently it is spent. We know there is waste, we know there is little innovation, we know governments are afraid of the unions and capitulate to their demands.

The level of debt in this country and province is staggering and it seems to be the dirty little secret every politician is afraid to face.

It is there for the reading in the N.L. Public Accounts Consolidated Summary Financial Statements. It just confirmed that our deficit for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017 was $1.1 billion — that’s how much we overspent last year.

Add to this the amount of debt we already have — $13.5 billion. Your share is $25,788.

We spend more to pay the interest on our debt ($935 million) than we do on education ($832 million).

We recently held a forum with business investors and one of them described their waning confidence this way: “Privatesector business investment is like building a house, yet the house we want to build is on a bog. The foundation (government) is a bog.” It is a sobering analogy.

Seventeen per cent of the population of N.L. pays 80 per cent of the taxes. The business community is already paying more than its fair share.

This is not only a provincial issue, it is a federal issue as well.

Canada’s debt is $652,303,967,376.95.

Your share is $17,898.98. In 2016-17, interest payments on the federal debt totalled $25 billion, which is more than what Ottawa spent on transfers to Canadian families in the form of children benefits ($22 billion). It’s also equivalent to the federal government’s planned budgetary deficit ($25 billion). Put differently, in the absence of federal interest payments, Ottawa could wipe out its deficit this year, despite its marked increase in program spending.

If you combine our sovereign and sub-sovereign debt, we have one of the worst levels of debt for advanced economies. You are not only responsible for servicing federal debt; you also have to service provincial and local government debt, too.

When we add up all the interest payments of the various governments across the country (federal, provincial and local), the total in 2015-16 was $63 billion — approximately equal to the $64 billion Canada spent on public primary and secondary education in 2013-14, the latest year of available data.

This level of debt is like a crack in a tree and one storm can bring the whole thing crumbling down.

Storms like aging demographics, recession, wildfires, increasing health care costs, high levels of personal debt. I for one don’t want to live near this tree.

This charade over the past few months by Finance Minister Bill Morneau has been a great distraction for him and officials in finance. Instead of trying to generate more revenue, why not better spend the money you already have?

Where is your commitment to cost savings? Where is your commitment to reducing your debt?

Governments should be much more meagre with our money and our children and grandchildren’s money. This kicking the can down the road and leaving our problems for others to solve is more than irresponsible, it is immoral. When history judges this generation of our province’s and nation’s leaders it will use words like squandered, missed opportunity, self-interested.

But it does not have to be this way.

We don’t have the luxury of optimism for the future without commitment.

The business people I represent at the St. John’s Board of Trade want Newfoundland and Labrador to be successful. They are committed to innovating and improving. They have chosen to invest here, they have chosen to employ people here and they have chosen to raise their families here. They are part of the solution. Are you?