WEYBURN - An adage of farming, and of life really, is that whatever you sow, you will reap in due time.
The federal Liberals are finding this out, and are doubling down on the hurt on Canadians as a result.
After irresponsible heavy spending through the COVID pandemic, they are now going to try and scratch back whatever they can from those who can least afford it, ordinary Canadians, through taxation.
It was bad enough that, during the pandemic, Trudeau first said they would never raise taxes during such a difficult economic time, but then he and his government lied by refusing to back down on raising the punitive and regressive carbon tax.
With that heavy burden placed, particularly on western Canadians, the prices of everything has continued to skyrocket, and instead of being human and merciful, they allow those taxes to remain rather than allowing some relief for the public – and there will be further tax increases to come.
The carbon tax goes on everything and drives the price up on everything. Just on the gas that every driver has to buy for their vehicle, it adds 11 cents a litre, not counting the GST and provincial taxes. By 2030, that tax will be hiked to nearly 40 cents a litre.
Then there’s the payroll taxes, the mandatory payments to CPP and EI, which will increase by $818 this year for a middle-class wage earner.
For a person getting a paycheque of $65,000, nearly $4,500 of that is going to these deductions. Some claim they aren’t technically a tax, yet they are mandatory deductions from the money people earn from their jobs.
If you hearken back to the claims Trudeau and company made during the last federal election, he made the statement that he was all about the middle-class Canadian, and yet these increases in costs are hurting the middle and lower-class wage earners the most, those who can least afford it.
The term for this kind of two-faced falsehood is “hypocrisy”, and it’s hurting the vast majority of Canadians.
Some people (certainly not everyone) will get a small GST rebate from the feds, and here in Saskatchewan there will be a one-time “affordability cheque” of $500.
This might help some for a very short time – but the high prices will still be there when that money is gone, and for the many Canadians not getting the rebate, the economic hurt is simply not going to go away.
There is an opportunity to really help people by giving some tax relief, but the Liberals won’t take it, because they spent money they don’t have by the billions, and now find they have to charge each and every Canadian a larger amount to get some of it back.
