For Canada to do better, the average Canadian and Canadian family must do better than it is doing now. Without risking damage to either health care or education or other needed social programs, governments at all levels must focus on controlling their costs and ensuring that the average Canadian does better.

While the GST was the most hated tax ever that led to the fall of many small businesses during the transition as people withheld their discretionary spending what the current Conservative government has done in reducing the GST instead of our taxes has been a retrograde step.

Governments can have it both ways. They can either have their consumption taxes and lower personal income taxes but not both which is what has happened.

As a Canadian working in Hong Kong these days but still a resident of Canada for tax purposes, I can tell you that our country is still a wonderful place as it cares for its seniors better than I see is done here. In Canada you don’t have to quit work to take care of sick or elderly parents. I see it all the time here. Our medical plans are not all linked to our jobs which if you lose yours means you might be in trouble if a family member has high medical bills.

We Canadians may complain a lot but we have much to be grateful for.

For me as a Canadian who is in the upper 10% of income earners I have done well. What worries me is that our youth are facing higher education costs and that these are set in place by my generation who benefited from relatively inexpensive post secondary education and who had summer jobs that paid well (not a lot of which exist today).

We need to invest in our youth and ensure that Canadians have decent jobs not all low paid service sector jobs. These jobs will only come from investing in people! Education is critical.

In British Columbia where I live, most people cannot afford to buy single family homes; our car insurance, gas, and hydro are all public monopolies, our education and health services are monopolized by unions, and our provincial government boasts that it is the largest unionized corporate employer in the province.

Thus almost all of our essential services are non-negotiable which doesn’t leave much left over for anything else. So yes, you can start a business but who is going to buy your product?

This stuff hasn’t trickled down to the consumer except via marginally lower taxes. And even there the Canadian taxpayer begins paying income tax at approximately $8k of labor or capital earnings per year, versus around $30k in the US.

The commercial/retail sector is still sclerotic. Interprovincial trade barriers keep markets balkanized, prices high and quality low. Oligopolies exist in most consumer sectors because the country is small (30 million) and yet essentially closed to retail competition with the U.S.

Productivity is endemically 20% below the U.S. and salaries are as well. The housing stock in major markets is generally of vastly inferior quality to the U.S. and much more expensive. Urban growth boundaries in places such as Ottawa make the situation much worse.

Two pithy examples of what being a Canadian consumer mean v. the U.S. I bought a hockey helmet three years ago while living in Ottawa. Manufactured 120 miles from my home in Ontario. It cost US$ 135 plus 12.5% tax for a total of ~ US$ 150 in Ottawa. Couldn’t’ find it online any cheaper anywhere in Canada. Ended up buying it one week later from a sporting goods warehouse operation in L.A. and having it shipped to my brother’s house in Upstate NY. Paid $75 with shipping.

Shopped for a new car shortly before moving. US$40k in Ontario incl tax. Same model and trim in the U.S. three months later cost US$26k.

Lower taxes are great for Canadians. However, these don’t begin to ameliorate the misery that characterizes being a Canadian consumer.

What I find most disturbing is that, in both Canada and the U.S., there doesn’t seem to be a very good correlation between the rhetoric of politicians and the behaviour of the governments they form. In Canada, we’ve had Liberals that, during the election, decried spending restraint as though it was the greatest possible evil, but who were reasonably prudent while in power, and Conservatives who have done the opposite. I believe it has been similar in the U.S. (although without quite so much prudence, apparently).

This leaves thoughtful voters in a quandary. If politicians were consistently deceptive about fiscal prudence then we could simply vote for those who argued against it, knowing that we’d then get it. But sometimes the rhetoric does match the results, making it very difficult to choose.