At The Trough continues my curiosity at Canadian focused looks at the economy, and ties in with Corporate Control from a few weeks back. Here Laurent Carbonneau looks at the Canadian corporate welfare industry that was started with the founding of our country as we gave money to build railroads that mostly profited the investors from outside of our burgeoning country.
Some stats that point to the issue:
- Since 2019-2020 Canada has been giving $.50 of every dollar collected in corporate taxes right back to business Pg 13
- Over the life of the Justin Trudeau Liberal government business subsidies doubled from $310 per Canadian to $800
- in 1951 corporate taxes were about 28% of the Federal budget and declined to 12.2% by 1972. During the same period the share taken from personal income tax went from 26.7% to 49.9% Pg 49
- subsidies like the ones we gave to Stellantis and Volkswagen to build plants often outright fail because the project never happens and if it does the rewards always fall far short of the rosy predictions used to sell the subsidy to voters. Pg 70
I leave this book feeling annoyed that business has captured government so strongly so that much of my tax dollars goes to support huge businesses not from Canada that are recording record profits.
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