Good afternoon.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today.
My name is Aaron Wudrick, and I'm the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the CTF is a federally incorporated, not-for-profit citizen's group that has over 429,000 supporters nationwide.
The CTF is dedicated to three main principles, namely, lower taxes, less waste and accountable government.
We were pleased to make a set of recommendations before this committee in February prior to the last federal budget. For the sake of the record, I will recount those recommendations briefly. We recommend government balance the budget, create a legislated debt reduction schedule or budget line item, end the double taxation of gasoline, reduce the political party donation tax credit, resist demands for any new sugar or fat taxes, pass truth in budgeting legislation, undertake a core review of all government spending, put an end to corporate welfare, control public sector pay and benefits, and finally, and it's a small one, overhaul the employment insurance system. Those are just a few small items to chew on.
Turning to this year's budget, the questions put to witnesses on how to best move Canada forward by maximizing economic growth is, of course, a proper and commendable goal for any government to have. The debate is about just how well placed governments are to steer that growth. This government, like its predecessor, is fond of taking an activist approach of selecting preferred companies or industries, and then subsidizing them with tax dollars. I cannot stress enough that it does not matter whether it is General Motors, or Bombardier, or a small green technology startup, this approach is fraught with perverse incentives and unintended consequences. I understand that the intent of such subsidies is to help businesses, and more specifically to protect private sector jobs, but an unfortunate hard reality of private sector jobs is that they either exist because they make economic sense, or they no longer exist.
Throwing tax dollars at a company to save private sector jobs means they cease to be private sector jobs. There is no getting around this. This is not to say that government should stand idly by when people are thrown out of work. There is a role for governments to assist people who are affected by economic change, but helping the people affected is not the same as simply throwing public money at companies that are no longer sustainable in the marketplace.
The finance minister has asked Canadians to think big. I should point out this need not always mean spend more. I appreciate that the government does not share the Taxpayers Federation's view on balanced budgets, but the government must still be mindful of the fact it is already running a deficit three times the size it promised during the election. It has also abandoned its timeline to return to balanced budgets, as well as its commitment to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio.
Earlier this week, the minister also seemed to be foreshadowing that the forthcoming fall economic update will not bring good news. I would caution the government against drawing the conclusion that even more stimulus spending is the solution, and remind him of Einstein's wise adage that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Perhaps the single biggest way the federal government can create new opportunities for Canadians is to expand access to new markets and remove the barriers to entry that exist in many industries. Some protected industries may not like this and will no doubt protest, but the government's responsibility must be to the broader economic well-being of all Canadians and not just industry incumbents that are afraid of healthy market competition. In particular, trade agreements should include provisions that seek to reduce or eliminate harmful subsidies that end up costing taxpayers of all countries, and yet ultimately only serve to cancel each other out.
In closing, we would like to reiterate our basic message to the government that it is important to balance the understandable desire to help with the recognition of the limits of government intervention and the finite resources at your disposal.
Thank you.