Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee, of course, for having me appear again today.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we're a national non-profit, non-partisan group. We have 235,000 supporters across the country. Our advocacy is really focused on three general areas: lower taxes, less government waste, and accountable and transparent government.
I don't want to shock anyone on the committee, but the CTF has something of a reputation as being the biggest skinflints around town, and that's a tag that we're not at all ashamed of having in a town where there's really no shortage of people asking for more spending and very few asking for less. We think it's important, as part of that debate, that there be a counterweight to what effectively are endless pleas for “more everything”, and we're very proud to play that role.
Insofar as we apply that lens to a tidal wave of spending, if I can call it that, that has washed over the country during the course of this pandemic, I don't think the concern is about demanding perfection from government, but just asking for a little humility. These temporary emergency programs are very expensive programs, and they're very blunt instruments, which is understandable given that they had to be conceived, designed and implemented in a matter of days or weeks, as opposed to the usual months or years.
Given the circumstances, I think most fair-minded people will agree that a little slack deserves to be cut in terms of their implementation, but it's also fair to ask the government to take steps to improve and recalibrate these programs as they go along, in order to ensure that what is being spent is actually being spent well. A couple of examples can illustrate the ways in which the government arguably has overshot the mark thus far.
When you look at StatsCan data, it shows that between the first and third quarters of last year, aggregate private sector earnings dropped by about $15 billion, a significant sum in terms of lost income, but during the same period, the government sent out $103 billion in transfers, primarily from employment insurance and the emergency response benefit. What that means is that for every dollar Canadians lost in income, the government sent $7 out the door. If the goal of these policies was income replacement, it's an enormously expensive overshoot.
Also, looking at the business side, if you look at the emergency wage subsidy, which was designed to save private sector jobs—an appropriate objective—it has also been incredibly expensive, with each saved job coming at a cost of $180,000 in government spending. This is happening at a time when we're hearing stories in the media of large corporations banking record profits or boosting executive pay or issuing special dividends to shareholders. I don't think that's what most people envisioned in terms of what the wage subsidy was supposed to be used for.
These examples are just two that suggest there's room for improvement in terms of targeting pandemic support to achieve the results we're looking for, but at a lower cost.
With respect to Bill C-14 specifically, the main concern we have about this bill is the requested increase in the debt borrowing limit. I know that the minister and Mr. Fast had an exchange on this issue at a previous meeting, but with respect, the minister's insistence that there's a chart on page 141 of the fall economic statement that explains everything was not very persuasive.
First of all, the chart she cites includes spending projections out to 2024, so that does not explain why the minister requires such a huge increase in the debt ceiling today, in 2021. It also bakes in the projection of $100 billion in stimulus, which the minister has committed to spend without deciding what she wants to spend it on. In our view, that has it backwards and is putting the cart before the horse.
With all due respect, rather than demanding that the opposition push through the bill and get more borrowing room, we think the minister's time would be better spent presenting a federal budget, which we haven't had in two years. I understand that the government insists that things are in flux and presenting one is difficult. I think that was a reasonable argument a year ago. I think it's a lot more difficult to make that argument today, especially when you consider that all our peer countries and every province in Canada except Nova Scotia have managed to present one.
I'm certain that this government does not want to leave the impression that it is somehow uniquely incapable of presenting a budget at this time. We just urge them to get on with that and produce a federal budget at the earliest opportunity.