How to Pay of Canada's Debt

[80watts]

The Minister of Finance needs your Help. He is spending way too much money and needs to find more revenue. As a Canadian Citizen could you suggest some ways to increase revenues for Canada.

In no way I'm I a current fan of the Liberal government, I am asking because as a human being I have to pay my bills monthly, like rent , car payment, gas, hydro and I have to pay for that from what I earn a month; and I think Canada should too (without that borrowing or going into federal debt).

Remember everything is debate-able.

I'll start
1. Current policies in the US, some say its harder for the sex worker to make a living due to some republican bills. I say bring their escorts up here to Canada, the escorts clientele will follow (might have to open up lots more brothels, I mean escort services), big tourism boom for Canada. We will have a slightly increased immigration rate from the US due to the clients meeting our nice Canadian beauties... tax the American Escorts a flat rate of 20% for income. thoughts...

2. Nationalize all non reusable resources. Or tax the companies that mine resources at 80% on profits. Resources include oil, minerals, gold, diamonds- any type of mining etc. The taxes collected would be operated like Norway's "oil fund" - Principle of tax is not spent, gov could only touch 4% of the interest earned, while the principle collects interest. Norway did this when they found oil, and now that fund is worth over a Trillion dollars. with the money invested globally. this would make the resources last in monetary terms, longer that the one time sell of the resource. Alberta saved money from oil sales that went to the Heritage Fund (Billion dollars) and charged no PST. Their politicians fucked that up.

3. National projects. (will take initial investment, but will pay off in future taxes)(create jobs along the way)(people spend their money..)
a. Make transportation hubs; electric trains; solar power farms, wind power farm to power the trains (travel trains along the trans canada hwy or highways or current rail tracks); or electric cars. tax comes from electicity
b. Hydrogen economy, every car and vehicle runs off hydrogen, either as a fuel cell or ICE burning hydrogen. tax the hydrogen
c. Fresh water project. Desalinate sea water and pipe fresh water inland for water compsumption/storage. tax the water (This would be nice down in California and the American Mid west (east past the Colorado River)) Look at Florida fresh water initiative, building fresh water reservoirs to be filled by Reverse Osmosis Plants (takes sea water and makes fresh water thru membranes which kinda filters the seawater). Here in Canada BC to AB and Sask. out east NS, NB, Nfld, Quebec anywhere inland.

4. Flat 25% tax. Everyone pays it, even the rich. No write offs, except medical write offs. clears up the paperwork.

5. Nationlize the wealth. Any one with over 2 million dollars gives the rest to the Canadian government. (includes stocks and bonds).

6. Charge 33% on dividends (that for stocks).

7. Capital Gains tax - 33% on stock gains, no claiming losses. After all its too much paper work to fiqure that all out. so just gains. the fed gov will cash in on your risks, but won't take your losses. :loco:

8. Anyone holding money overseas and havent declared this on fed income tax, gets taxed 98%. 99 and 100 just seem too much.... Hint invest in Canada....

9. People taking foreign vacations outside of Canada, get surcharged 15% of holiday package. Or maybe 150%, if you can afford to take your family, you can afford to pay for 3 other families too.. thats fair....
No Company write offs, if you take your wife to a conference outside of Canada because your on business..Company will be fined 45% if you take your wife.

10. Stop giving Americans back the HST and PST at the border. Our government has earned it, but when in Rome do as Rome does. so if we charge HST and PST , visitors to our country should share in the canadian custom of paying taxes..

11. Raise the HST back to 7%.

Can't wait for the comments....

 

[rlock]

2. Nationalize all non reusable resources. Or tax the companies that mine resources at 80% on profits. Resources include oil, minerals, gold, diamonds- any type of mining etc. The taxes collected would be operated like Norway's "oil fund" - Principle of tax is not spent, gov could only touch 4% of the interest earned, while the principle collects interest. Norway did this when they found oil, and now that fund is worth over a Trillion dollars. with the money invested globally. this would make the resources last in monetary terms, longer that the one time sell of the resource. Alberta saved money from oil sales that went to the Heritage Fund (Billion dollars) and charged no PST. Their politicians fucked that up.

A good idea, but Albertans would shit bricks if this was proposed. They'd think it was the NEP 2.0.

c. Fresh water project. Desalinate sea water and pipe fresh water inland for water compsumption/storage. tax the water (This would be nice down in California and the American Mid west (east past the Colorado River)) Look at Florida fresh water initiative, building fresh water reservoirs to be filled by Reverse Osmosis Plants (takes sea water and makes fresh water thru membranes which kinda filters the seawater). Here in Canada BC to AB and Sask. out east NS, NB, Nfld, Quebec anywhere inland.

I think the Americans should look after their own water. If they are desalinating in places like LA, they can power it with the abundant solar resources available.

4. Flat 25% tax. Everyone pays it, even the rich. No write offs, except medical write offs. clears up the paperwork.

Flat taxes are one of those things that sounds good, but really make the rich-poor divide worse. Money tends to get sucked upwards, to those who already have it; the idea of the poor paying less and the rich more is to counter-balance what is already going on. Maybe it doesn;t havr to be so drastic though, if the rest is fixed.

10. Stop giving Americans back the HST and PST at the border. Our government has earned it, but when in Rome do as Rome does. so if we charge HST and PST , visitors to our country should share in the canadian custom of paying taxes..

11. Raise the HST back to 7%.

I agree that these rebates are a stupid thing. Everyone likes to get back a little money, but it would just be more efficient to not do it at all.
I've never heard of another country that gives such "apology money" for a sales tax.

And yeah, Harper lowered the GST/HST, but it was a bad idea. Put it back to 7%, and put the proceeds towards erasing the debt or giving the military the boost they need.

 

[g eazy]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economy works. You can't just say "eliminate debt" without putting into context what is the debt and what purpose it serves. Not all debt is bad, and debt alone would be an extremely poor metric to evaluate the financial wellbeing of this country.

I appreciate the specific suggestions as it reflects your love of the country, but when you get to the macroeconomic level of just about any policy decision it just becomes a shitstorm. It's easy to point and say what works and what doesn't from an armchair, but even with some things implemented, how can you say for certainty it wasn't the indirect result of something else that was going on concurrently? That leads to the general public putting too much praise and critique on government figure/heads. I laugh when people say things like "Bill Clinton lead this country to great economic prosperity" or "Trump is singlehandedly destroying America". Surely they are influential figures but the world is a complex place with many moving parts.

 

[Bridge]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the economy works. You can't just say "eliminate debt" without putting into context what is the debt and what purpose it serves. Not all debt is bad, and debt alone would be an extremely poor metric to evaluate the financial wellbeing of this country.

I appreciate the specific suggestions as it reflects your love of the country, but when you get to the macroeconomic level of just about any policy decision it just becomes a shitstorm. It's easy to point and say what works and what doesn't from an armchair, but even with some things implemented, how can you say for certainty it wasn't the indirect result of something else that was going on concurrently? That leads to the general public putting too much praise and critique on government figure/heads. I laugh when people say things like "Bill Clinton lead this country to great economic prosperity" or "Trump is singlehandedly destroying America". Surely they are influential figures but the world is a complex place with many moving parts.

Nice to see this rational perspective. The question of debt is further complicated as it can either be seen as crowding out private investment and consumption because of the potential for higher interest rates, or it can be seen as a way for governments to stimulate the economy because business or consumer confidence has fallen. Also this is just an economic focus on debt and leaves out political, environmental, social, and philosophical lenses!

 

[MissingOne]

... Nationalize all non reusable resources. ...

First you'd have to un-nationalize them. The Crown (that's us) owns almost all mineral resources in Canada. There are a few exceptions, such as mineral rights that were given away with 19th-century land grants to railways.

The companies that mine resources don't own them. They lease the rights to mine them.

If you think The Crown doesn't charge high enough royalties on mineral resources, go and lobby your provincial government. Not the feds. But hurry up, because the way things are going, indigenous people will have control of the resources on Crown lands in a few years. They may well charge high fees for the rights to exploit the resources, but none of those will go towards paying off any of our governments debts.

 

[wetnose]

The post showcases OP's ignorance of energy, politics and economics. Seriously, please do some research next time before you post.

The only thing I'm in favor of is raising the HST back to 7%.

2% is not a lot for most people on a daily basis, but it's huge for government in aggregate.

I'm also in favor of the Tobin tax, where 0.02% is levied on the sale/purchase of any financial instrument (GICs, stocks, etc).

Again, tiny individually (i.e $200 per million dollars), but huge in aggregate.

 

[storm rider]

TRIM THE FAT....it is just that simple.

Our Governments from Civic to Provincial and most especially Federal are bloated bureaucratic money pits.From bloated amounts of workers who sit idle or do next to nothing.All of their wages and even worse their defined benefit pension plans are indexed to inflation and the costs of those just soaks up more and more tax payer money as the years roll by.

If companies like CP Rail/Teck Resources/CN Rail/Loblaws and so on and so forth ran their companies like our Governments do they would have gone bankrupt years ago due to not having an endless supply of money from tax payers as well as the ability to literally print money via borrowing on the back of those tax revenues.

SR

 

[licks2nite]

Bring back export manufacturing jobs. Call it a conspiracy if you like but the powers-that-be in Canada, be that in cooperation with other parts of world or just at home, have consistently made circumstances in Canada since World War II such that good paying manufacturing jobs have disappeared from Canada. In the beginning it was a wholesale tax on exported products and what manufacturing there was in Canada was confined in central Canada that didn't learn to compete with other provinces and territories to make reliable cost competitive products that could compete with products from the rest of the world. After any savvy Canadian entrepreneurs left Canada the foreign branch plants that were producing products for the local Canadian markets were subjected to the whims of judiciary, that grew rich themselves and remain rich, that handed out wage gains that drove even the foreign branch plants out of Canada. Most of the remaining manufacturing left Canada when trade treaties assured Canadian retail interests access to cheap overseas labour in exchange for unfettered access to Canadian natural resources. In the 1950s and '60s one family member could afford to pay for and own outright a single family dwelling anywhere in Canada. Understand that today 2 family members working full-time in the same home have difficulty making a down payment on a condominium let alone paying down the mortgage. That crowd living decades now on the sidewalks at Hastings Street between Main & Carroll Streets weren't around in the '50s and '60s.

Understand that the financial system, also known as "fractional reserve banking", a creation of antiquated and obsolete 19th century politics was constructed to collapse without growth in the economy. Without growth the stock market will crash. Completely at odds with the environment of finite planet earth. The only viable thing to keep an economy growing is population growth. Exactly what has turned many parts of the world into a cesspit. It's the law. Unfair and un-nice, antiquated and obsolete, but it's legal and needs reforming. Centralized authority is inefficient and inherently corrupt, unwieldy for authorities that mean well, and malfeasance of sociopaths that gravitate to it.

 

[Crookedmember]

It's sort of funny how conservatives for some reason think government debt is such a bad thing, when in fact two conservative Prime Ministers--Mulroney and Harper--are responsible for most of Canada's Federal debt.

 

[hedgeman]

how about first off stop giving other countries billions of dollars in loans or aid we will never see or get back, and start demanding payments on that $ we do have out there right now, and putting that into the deficit...thats a start...

 

[Crookedmember]

Canada's foreign aid budget, which helps some of the poorest people on earth, is 0.26% of GNI. That's like a person earning $100,000 per year giving $260 to charity, or the price of a blow job.

 

[luvsdaty]

Wasn't the Gst introduced to pay off Canada's debt?

 

[wetnose]

Bring back export manufacturing jobs. Call it a conspiracy if you like but the powers-that-be in Canada, be that in cooperation with other parts of world or just at home, have consistently made circumstances in Canada since World War II such that good paying manufacturing jobs have disappeared from Canada.

...That crowd living decades now on the sidewalks at Hastings Street between Main & Carroll Streets weren't around in the '50s and '60s.

LOL, what would we make and who would buy those products? Our best and smartest knowledge-employees get vacuumed by the US and we're not cheap to hire. Manufacturing was lovely in the 50s and 60s, when China was barely a blip in the world economy and Europe was dragging itself out of WW2, but that's hardly the case anymore.

In the US, they're now expanding on the concept of dark factories, where production is so automated that they don't even turn on the lights. In China, they're actively replacing labor with robots in manufacturing. 50/60s manufacturing will never come back, just like the buggy whip and whaleoil lamps.

And as for the crowd living on the sidewalks of DTES, it had nothing to do with the drop in manufacturing. Blame it on the shift from institutionalization to community based mental care starting from mid 70s. Riverview hospital (now shut down) once housed 5000 at its peak. DTES used to be a good area - remember Woodwards?

 

[Mrmotorscooter]

 

[g eazy]

the responses in this thread scare me, but unfortunately it's a reasonable perspective of the general population

 

[yvrvisitor]

:lol: :lol:
Where did you find this!!???!??!??@

 

[MissingOne]

:lol: :lol:
Where did you find this!!???!??!??@

Maybe in a CRA employee manual?

 

[overdone]

how about first off stop giving other countries billions of dollars in loans or aid we will never see or get back, and start demanding payments on that $ we do have out there right now, and putting that into the deficit...thats a start...

how about we take Que off the welfare train first



here's what Wall had to say, now that he doesn't have to care what others think

“Folks, I’m going to say this. I’d go to premiers’ meetings and there’d always be these forces that would say: No, don’t do anything that would upset la belle province.

“This is a $19-billion federal program and $11.3 billion of it goes to a 400-year old economy in the second-most populous province in the country. There’s an issue there.”

 

[JoeSmith6]

Canada should just increase taxes for the rich 1% to pay for the debt and pay for future expenditure. Or you can issue bonds to pay for public infrastructure work.

Taxing corporation that polute your countries environment will have double benefits by generating taxes income and help the environment.

Can Canada print more money like we do in the States?

California Joe, Social Justice Warrior

 

[JoeSmith6]

Another good way to pay the debt is to increase the number of immigrants. With more people you have a larger tax base and you also have the benefits of cultural diversification. California has been a perfect example of this, Latin Americans have enriched the state culturally and they spend money and start small businesses that employ people and contribute to the economy.

California Joe, Social Justice Warrior