Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to the Toronto Star

Is there no end to the constant whining of the private sector about how high their taxes are and how little profit they make, while ordinary Canadians struggle to get by? This strategy by corporations to weaken democratic governments by stripping them of anything of value (including tax revenues) has been working perfectly since the 1970s.

When taxes are cut for business, taxes go up for everyone else or their standard of living drops. Corporate Canada wants all the money and none of the social responsibility.  Over the last fifty years corporations have successfully argued that they couldn’t afford pensions, healthcare, high wages or benefits and stay in business. They have also argued that full-time, stable jobs are a thing of the past and converted our western economy into a globalized labour rat-race where jobs have mostly gone off-shore leaving rust-belt factories in every community in North America. They have also avoided their role and responsibility in climate change, environmental pollution, worker’s healthcare, garbage and air quality that they are directly responsible for with the blessings of governments. Worker protection is governed by bare minimum standards.  During all of this they have been making enormous and growing profits. When all else fails they take the money out of the company, declare bankruptcy and open under a new name a few days later. On most of these arguments governments timidly agree, keeping “red-tape” and “bureaucracy” to a minimum, leaving society with a voluntary business compliance mechanism that is a no compliance mechanism. Society is stuck with all the costs and the problems. Governments only react when the media identifies an issue. There is little substantive legislation protecting Canadians despite there being piles of policy protecting business. We have an aristocratic legal system inherited from the UK.

We are bankrupting Canada to save the private sector and the pitiful minimum wage McJobs that they tout. We have become a nation of passive people working multiple jobs, longer hours, getting less. with fewer protections who are two weeks away from ruin.  When corporate taxes are zero then what? Governments and democracy will be out of business. We will be ruled by a cadre of extremely rich oligarch sycophants who will arbitrarily dictate our jobs and capitalist democracy. Real shared democracy is nothing but a dream.

Corporate taxes are the lifeblood of any country and fund our civilized society. Corporate Canada has forgotten that they are part of that society run by the government, not a parallel independent entity. Their businesses and the taxes they pay are there to build a better society for everyone, not a slave society to make a few shareholders fabulously wealthy.

The Minister of Finance who came from the private sector has given business a huge gift for Christmas – tax relief and capital gains exemptions. At a time when unemployment is at an all time low and business profits were 8.1% last year the constant whining of the private sector has not relented with a huge transfer of public wealth into private hands. And yet they still want more.  This gesture will simply be added to the thousands of tax breaks and concessions that have been fawningly deeded to the private sector by various governments since the 1970s when corporate tax rates where 72 percent prior to Ronald Reagan and the average post-war tax rate was 80 percent. It was then that the corporate sector began to globalize and complain that tax rates were too high. Morneau’s senseless and unneeded gift will drop the corporate tax rate in Canada to the lowest in the G7 of approximately 14 percent, a catastrophic drop that has put governments all over the world on life support. It appears Morneau will ignore the case of Ireland (the “Celtic Tiger”) that was once lauded for its aggressively low tax rate before virtually going bankrupt and plunging the Irish economy into a prolonged recession that goes on today. Corporations pay miniscule taxes compared to profits and pay much less than the posted rate.

Cutting taxes is a vicious and predatory race to the bottom that is intended to bankrupt governments and leave only a hollowed-out shell of a democracy while corporations exploit the world. Instead of these taxes coming into the government where they can be used by everyone fairly, they will go to shareholders. Bill Morneau will go back to his company like a decorated war hero having bilked Canadian taxpayers of billions – just like every finance minister before him.