You may recall that PM Chretien recently commented that money
was not available for...
Romanow Report recommendations: $15,000,000,000  (fifteen)  and by the way...
Universal childcare :  $7,000,000,000 (seven billion)
and a subway to York University $1,700,000,000 (one point seven billion)
and public transit
and ...

TOTAL $23,700,000,000  (23.7 billion)  A LOT OF MONEY?

The amount of money given away by Paul Martin in the last Liberal budget
over the next five years to corporate tax breaks and income tax reductions
(not even debt reduction) that primarily favour the rich:

$100,000,000,000  (one hundred billion dollars)

No money available?  Certainly available for the wealthy, but not for most
Canadians.

See below,  the report referred to is available at:

http://www.policyalaternatives.ca
-------------------------
 Dec. 20, 2002. 01:06 AM

http://thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1035775777553

 CAROL GOAR - Toronto Star
 Requiem for a Just Society
 Steve Kerstetter waits for Statistics Canada's Survey of Financial Security the
way kids wait for Star Wars movies or  oenologists wait for Beaujolais Nouveau.

 Finally in the spring of 2001, the federal agency released its motherlode of
data about personal wealth; a massive compendium of charts and tables showing
how the country's $2.4 trillion in assets are divided among its 12 million
families.

 The Vancouver social policy analyst dove in with relish. Twenty months later,
he has emerged worried and angry. His study, Rags And Riches, reflects those
sentiments.

 The Statscan survey, which measured the personal worth of Canadians in 1999,
showed that the richest 50 per cent of families held 94.4 per cent of the
nation's wealth (or $2.3 trillion). That left the other half of the population
with just 5.6 per cent (or $137 billion.)

 But rather than trying to counter this skewed distribution of wealth,
Kerstetter noted, the federal government and most of the provinces were wilfully
exacerbating it. They were offering tax relief to those who needed it least,
while scaling back the social programs that kept the poor from hitting rock
bottom.

 "Extreme inequality may not be inevitable in Canada, but it does seem destined
to continue in the absence of radical changes in government policy," he
concluded dejectedly.

 The wide gap between rich and poor did not surprise him. It had been there
since Statistics Canada started tracking wealth distribution 30 years ago.

 What did unsettle him was the dramatic polarization of the last 15 years.

 Until the mid '80s, the haves and have-nots in Canadian society moved ahead
more or less together.

 But after 1984, the pattern shifted abruptly. The richest 10 per cent of
families made substantial gains at the expense of the other 90 per cent of the
population.

 That was the era of the "trickle-down" theory, popularized by former U.S.
president Ronald Reagan. Kerstetter, who worked in Ottawa at the time, watched
it infiltrate Canadian thinking.

 "Politicians from along a broad range of the political spectrum argued that
growth was a prerequisite for almost anything else governments did," he
recalled. "Baking a bigger economic pie made far more sense, they said, than
simply searching for new ways to slice up the pie already on the table.

 "But literally millions of families and individuals have ended up on the brink
of financial disaster, while others have managed to accumulate huge slices of
the wealth pie."

 Although Kerstetter has no statistics to prove it - and it will be years before
StatsCan produces any - he suspects that the polarity has worsened since 1999.
And he lays the blame firmly at the feet of the man who would be Prime Minister.

 The centrepiece of Paul Martin's 2000 budget was a plan to cut taxes by $58
billion over five years. The former finance minister upped the ante to $100
billion, eight months later, in a pre-election mini-budget.

 Martin claimed, at the time, that low- and middle-income Canadians would be the
primary beneficiaries of his tax relief. He highlighted the savings that
families with incomes between $25,000 and $60,000 could expect.

 What he failed to point out was that families with incomes above $60,000 were
in line for much larger gains than their less affluent compatriots. Not only
would they get an income tax break; they'd pay less in capital gains tax, they'd
be able to shelter more money in registered retirement savings plans and they'd
be able to shield stock options from the taxman.

 A few journalists, such as my colleague Tom Walkom, figured out from the tables
published in Martin's background documents, that a disproportionate share of the
minister's tax relief was going to families with incomes above $60,000.

 But even the most diligent analysts could not calculate the impact of Martin's
tax changes on the highest earners. The finance department's tables stopped at
income levels of $125,000. "The biggest cuts really went to the rich and super
rich," Kerstetter said.

 Asked what advice he would offer the next prime minister to make Canada a more
equal society, Kerstetter had three suggestions.

 The first was the re-imposition of an inheritance tax. Canada is one of the few
Western democracies that doesn't have one. Ottawa abolished its succession duty
in 1972.

 Kerstetter believes that some kind of estate tax would help whittle down the
advantages of those who start with wealth, privilege and connections. It would
also provide Ottawa with money to repair the nation's ripped social safety nets.

 His second proposal was an overhaul of the tax system. Conservative finance
minister Michael Wilson made it less progressive in 1987. The Liberals have been
adding loopholes that favour the rich ever since.

 If Kerstetter had his way, Canada's next government would create new tax
brackets for those at the upper end of the income hierarchy and cancel the
special deals that allow corporations and wealthy individuals to escape paying
billions in taxes.

 Finally, he would urge the incoming prime minister to reinvest in the social
programs that were chopped to balance the budget.

 "Millions of families are much closer to the precipice than anyone would
imagine," he said. "The poorest 20 per cent would be destitute within four to
five weeks if their income dried up."

 Kerstetter is still poring over Statstics Canada's survey. "It's a gold mine of
information."

 But each fresh nugget hurts.

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