Happy New Year, corporate Canada
The great Canadian giveaway continues. Canada's most profitable corporations - such as banks, oil and mining companies - are about to get another big gift from the Harper Conservatives.
How low will corporate taxes go before common and economic sense prevails?
On New Year's Day, the federal corporate tax rate will be reduced once again as it has been every year since the Conservatives have been in power, dropping from 21 per cent in 2006 to 15 per cent in 2012.
Canada now has among the lowest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world, lower than even the United States.
The Parliamentary Budget Office says the reduction to 15 per cent in 2012 from 18 per cent in 2010 has cost the government $11.5 billion in annual tax revenue.
It has significantly contributed to the federal deficit that is being used as the excuse to slash government programs and services and lay off thousands of federal civil servants.
What is becoming clearer and clearer is, despite billions and billions in tax breaks, corporate Canada, for the most part, is not creating the jobs it could be, not spending on capital investment or raising wages.
“What we've been doing with it is to make our taxes more competitive, to pay down some debt, to invest in infrastructure, which is a pre-condition to economic development, and above all we got to diversify the economy before the oil is gone.