Thank you very much.
Greetings to the Chair and esteemed finance committee members. Welcome to the sunny Okanagan; I hope you get a chance to enjoy a little bit of it before you have to go on to your next stop.
My name is Teresa Marshall. I address you today as an independent Canadian citizen, a resident of Kelowna, and a mother.
I believe the issue that this government needs to address in the upcoming budget is the issue of economic inequality. I believe the solution lies in tax justice. On the way here this morning, and every day in Kelowna, I pass numerous homeless people. There's no reason for homelessness to be here in one of the most well-off cities, in one of the richest provinces and richest countries in the world. Through improved tax policies, I believe this government will be able to fund and deliver on its human rights obligations to Canadian citizens in the form of affordable public housing, health care, education, child care, transportation, clean water, and sanitation.
I want to congratulate this government for making efforts to deal with wealthy individuals in the issue of tax avoidance, but much more needs to be done about corporations that represent up to two-thirds of the tax avoidance problem we see today.
Currently, ordinary Canadian taxpayers and small and medium-sized business enterprises are paying a much higher effective tax rate than the very rich and corporations. This is a long-term change in the ratio of tax burden between individual citizens and business in Canada, and that's not fair. It's estimated that Canada is losing $7.8 billion a year to tax havens. That alone would fund a universal national public child care program.
I want to make a note about the issue of child care, as a mother. It's my understanding that in Quebec, which is the only province which has an affordable, accessible child care program, in the time that that has been in place the government recouped 40% of its initial investment in the first year, which is an incredible return rate—I don't know many other investments that return that—and within 10 years the number of women in the workforce was the highest in Canada, after that child care program was put in place. And most remarkably, Quebec reduced its poverty rate by half. That is truly an investment in generations for generations.
If we make sure that multinational corporations and the very rich pay their share, we will have that kind of funding for child care, for example, because for now, parents like myself are looking at paying for child care. The cost for one child in B.C. can be upwards of $1,500 month, the same amount as for rent or a mortgage. We are paying more to have our kids in child care than it will cost to put them into university, and that doesn't seem fair.
I also think that if we apply some of these progressive tax policies, we could end fossil fuel subsidies rather than subsidize LNG plants, for example, that can endanger the Skeena River, one of the largest salmon rivers left in the world, or massive hydro dams, like the Site C dam that will flood some of the most productive agricultural land in B.C., and we could invest in truly clean and sustainable energy alternatives.
Thank you.