People have a gnawing question on their minds this election.
Can I afford this?
Some wonder if they can afford to fix their car.
Others ask how they’ll make rent after they were laid off from the steel plant.
The MNP financial firm reports 50 per cent of Canadians are within $200 of not being able to make minimum payments on their bills.
Affordability is THE ballot box question because half of Canadians are broke.
People are asking how much the plans of Liberal Leader Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre are going to cost.
Poilievre is promising to cut income taxes, saving a two-income family up to $1,800, while Carney is promising to save families up to $800.
Poilievre promises to axe all carbon taxes, including: the consumer carbon tax, the second carbon tax the Trudeau government buried in fuel regulations and the industrial carbon tax.
Carney has set the consumer carbon tax rate to zero.
But Carney isn’t axing carbon taxes, he wants to “change” the carbon tax, shifting the visible consumer carbon tax to the hidden industrial carbon tax.
Carney won’t say how much his industrial carbon tax will cost.
Steel mills, fertilizer plants and fuel refineries can’t absorb the cost of Carney’s industrial carbon tax. Those industries will shift production to the United States where there is no national carbon tax, or they will pass the costs to regular people.
Higher fertilizer costs will make food cost more at the grocery store. Higher refinery costs will make gasoline and diesel cost more at the pumps.
Hamilton’s steel pipe workers trade union is endorsing the Conservatives, saying Carney’s tax is costing about $800 million per year and it will “decimate” the steel industry.
Carbon taxes are still a cornerstone to Carney’s policy agenda.
“Carbon prices should increase in a gradual and predictable way,” Carney wrote in his book Value(s).
Carney has claimed his hidden industrial carbon tax will hit businesses, not consumers.
The polling firm Leger asked Canadians who they think will ultimately pay the bill for a hidden carbon tax on business. About 70 per cent of Canadians said that businesses will have to pass on some or most of those carbon tax bills to consumers.
Those Canadians are right.
When refineries and utilities are hit with a hidden carbon tax, the price of gas and home heating inevitably goes up.
We have the sticker price for some of Carney’s other plans.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer reports Carney’s cap on the energy sector will blow a $20 billion hole in the Canadian economy and cut 40,000 jobs.
Carney said he will increase funding for the CBC by $150 million initially. The former Liberal government heritage minister recommended boosting CBC’s taxpayer funding to $2 billion per year.
The Liberal government’s looming ban on the sale of new gasoline powered vehicles will cost billions. Forcing all cars in Canada to be battery-powered could cost up to $300 billion because of the cost of expanding the electrical grid.
How can Canadians afford this?
The Liberal government doubled the national debt in less than a decade, with taxpayers owing $1.2 trillion.
Even worse, the interest charges on the debt are now about $54 billion a year.
That means the interest charges on the federal debt cost more than a billion dollars a week.
But let’s make this much more practical for taxpayers struggling with affordability.
Federal sales taxes make virtually everything we buy more expensive. The interest charges on the debt eat up every nickel we pay in federal sales taxes. So when you get hit with the federal GST or HST on a new set of tires or a swing set for the backyard, that sales tax is just paying the interest charges on the federal debt.
And, as the federal government continues to borrow money, the interest costs continue to go up and it’s not hard to guess what will happen to taxes.
The country and Canadians are broke.
Carney must tell Canadians how much his policies will cost them.
Franco Terrazzano is the Federal Director and Kris Sims is the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
