The 2024 Federal Budget

One of my rules of politics is if a political party's opponents are loudly and repeatedly condemning a policy or a Bill in Parliament it is because they know that it could resonate with Canadians.

I am reminded of this rule by the continued reaction to the 2024 Budget.

Really, in most cases the budget is in the news for a single news cycle and then the media and the Opposition politicians go back to talking about the banal and the inane. That was not the case this time.

My favourite so far is some of the doctors being trotted out by the media to show the "error" of the changes in the capital gains taxes. I recall seeing one doctor, who is younger than me, stating that the changes could cause doctors to close up shop. The idea of course is to try to scare Canadians into rejecting a policy that only impacts a very small minority of Canadians by claiming it could lead to a doctors shortage. 

Of course, if you just use a small amount of critical thinking yo would realize that the main source of income for doctors is practicing medicine. If they stop doing that no amount of capital gains will compensate for that lost income. So closing up shop is not really an option, unless you were planning on retiring soon anyway. 

Then there is the old chestnut that doctors will head South. Again, a little critical thinking will help you realize that the American Medical Association might have a say in that plan and the cost of developing a new practice in a new country is much more than the loss in capital gains that would result from the very modest changes in the 2024 Budget.

There has been some talk about the deficit but the 2008 financial crisis and the cost of the COVID supports in 2020-2021 has demonstrated that the old deficit bugbear is not to be feared. Throw in the fact the deficit hawks only complain about deficits when they pay for social programs but are strangely quiet when they pay for tax cuts and you can safely ignore them.

Yes, yes, I know the argument that tax cuts are supposed to be better for the economy than government spending but that is ideological BS of the highest order. The simple fact is tax cuts and government spending are one in the same, just ways to get money into the economy. They both have their place but if the objective of a policy is to assist people with finding affordable housing then investing in programs to do that will be much more effective than a $200/year tax cut.

I have read the budget and it is actually quite ambitious, more ambitious than that last couple at least. I do not agree with all of its policies but I am all for the government taking real action on some of the issues that they outline in the document. It is about time.

Now if only this government could screw up the political courage to finally do something other than pay lip service to finding out whether and how the auto-fuel companies are colluding on price. When every company raises their prices by 20 cents all on the same night, within minutes of each other, a case could be made to suspect collusion and to go beyond the usual pro-forma inquiries that happen when the auto-fuel companies get too greedy.