Canada is wealthy enough to help Syrian refugees

Xenophobia: Arguing we can’t help own poor is mistaking what we choose to do with what we can do

Among the complaints about Canada’s decision to take 25,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the barrel bombs of a dictator and the rocket-propelled grenades of extremist death squads is the dispiriting objection that if we can’t afford to take care of our own, why should we take care of “them?”

The implication, of course, is that refugees will burden Canadians already struggling with such financial constraint that we can’t even house and feed our own citizens, so how do we justify extending a hand to others?

First, the role of Good Samaritan is not predicated upon a zero sum model. Extending help to one doesn’t preclude help for another. We don’t close hospitals in Regina because floods have driven people from their homes in Calgary.

Second, the number of refugees we are talking about is minuscule, about 0.069 per cent of Canada’s total population. If all these Syrian refugees sat in BC Place, half the seats would be empty.

Third, whatever certain Canadians may assume as a consequence of over-heated rhetoric from the anti-tax fringe, Canadians as a whole are not particularly burdened. Taxes are low, inflation is low, employment is relatively strong.

Fourth, refugees, it turns out, aren’t burdensome, they are an asset. Research shows that after two years, refugees generally report higher incomes and pay more taxes than the so-called investor immigrants favoured by past governments.

Meanwhile, Canada is an extraordinarily rich country. Its riches continue to accumulate.

When I entered the workforce and began paying the taxes I’ve paid every year for the last 50 years, Canada’s annual gross domestic product was about $40 billion. Today, it approaches $2 trillion. That’s an increase of about 4,650 per cent. Between 2014 and 2017, economic forecasts predict, Canada’s cumulative GDP will top $7.7 trillion, of which about $4.4 trillion will represent private consumption.

Over the period since I began paying income tax, our federal government alone — not counting provinces and municipal governments, which also collect royalties, rents and taxes — had cumulative revenues exceeding $2 trillion.

Parse this mountain of wealth however you like, this is still the richest generation ever to live in Canada. That makes it one of the richest in human history. Canadians today have more personal choices, more disposable income, live in bigger homes, drive bigger and newer cars, have better hospitals, schools, universities, spend more on travel, entertainment and live longer to enjoy their luxuries than any generation preceding them.

The latest figures from the countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development show Canadians to be among the least taxed citizens of the world’s elite nations.

Over the last 15 years Canadians’ tax burden, as a percentage of GDP has declined by 11.8 per cent. In 2014, Canada ranked 24th out of 34 developed economies in the ratio of tax to GDP. Our federal consumption tax, the GST, is the lowest of all the countries in the OECD. We pay five per cent, the OECD average is 19.2 per cent. And this Canadian federal consumption tax was reduced in 2006 and again in 2008. It was reduced, in fact, by more than 30 per cent.

Concurrent with the diminishing tax burden, the OECD forecasts that as a ratio to GDP, household disposable income in Canada will continue to rise between now and 2017.

So let us be honest. If there are Canadians in want it is not because there is too little money. It’s because of the policies our governments enact on our behalf toward the poor, the homeless and the vulnerable in our society.

If we have one in five children living in poverty, 200,000 homeless people, chronic food insecurity that forces 14 million visits to community food banks every year and a widening gap between social assistance levels — B.C., one of the most prosperous provinces, ranks near the bottom — and the minimum necessary for an acceptable standard of living, it’s not because we lack resources, it’s because of the priorities we empower our elected politicians to choose on our behalf.

The argument that we cannot afford to help 25,000 desperate refugees because we’re too poor to help our own people is simply a self-deception employed to grant permission to bigotry, prejudice and misplaced fear.

There’s more than enough money to help both refugees and Canada’s own poor. What’s required in responding to this humanitarian crisis is not a retreat to the self-serving mythology of xenophobia but a little gumption in getting on with what needs to be done — for both refugees and Canadians in need.