BY CHRIS MCGARRY
GUEST OPINION
With great dismay, I the read the article on the front page of the February 12th edition of The Guardian about a young woman who is being unfairly targeted by Canada Revenue Agency. Anita Casey, like thousands of other Canadians saddled with post-secondary education debt, is merely trying to get by and improve her future employment prospects.
Instead of going after the wealthiest Canadians (including finance minister Bill Morneau) who willfully stash billions in offshore tax havens, government tax collectors are putting all their efforts into targeting those with the least amount of power, ironically the same folks whose taxes pay for public services and the pensions of public service workers.
While our elected officials, both provincially and federally love to boast about how robust the Canadian economy is, the reality is, we’re on a slowly sinking ship. For a country of 35 million inhabitants, we’re saddled with an sizable amount of debt, $1.5 trillion, to be exact. An over-bloated housing market (soon to become a burst bubble) has skyrocketed the cost of real estate in this country to near-unattainable levels, once-stable full-time jobs with benefits have been replaced by part time gigs, not to mention the fact that wages have been stagnant for decades.
Ms. Casey is in the process of completing her Bachelor of Education. Considering that solid teaching jobs – like many other professions – are scarce, she might join the legions of other Islanders and Canadians who’ve moved permanently to China, Japan, Korea, Chile, Dubai and many other nations for stable employment, a higher quality of life, and a more reasonable cost of living
In speech after speech, politicians emphasize the need to ‘keep our young people’ in the province and country to be the tax base. Yet the government turns a blind eye when CRA audits young adults such as these waitresses employed by Murphy Group of Restaurants. With weak job prospects and a culture that discourages entrepreneurship instead of encouraging it, who wouldn’t move to greener pastures?
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump’s economic policies are turning the United States into a job magnet. The opposite is happening in Canada. If this trend continues and the ‘tax base’ relocates to other countries, who will pay for the ever-growing deficit as well as the unfunded liabilities the baby boomers have been promised over the past four decades?
Chris McGarry is a resident of the Belfast area
