Well, since it’s still Canada Day season, thought I should investigate how our federal tax dollars are contributing to making Canada, Canada. Le voila:
- $0.15 – interest on the debt (pays our Canada Savings Bonds interest, for example)
- $0.53 – given to the provinces and territories and individuals to do good stuff with. We hope.
- $0.23 – go to individual Canadians (like Old Age Security – $0.13, and Employment Insurance – $0.06, Child Tax Benefit – $0.04)
- $0.19 – given to provinces and territories to implement federal programs like healthcare-$0.08, education & social assistance -$0.03
- $0.11 – grants to things like the arts, farmers, aboriginal programs, bilingualism, sports
- $0.25 – operating costs of running the federal gov’t (eg. Nat’l Defence – $0.07, RCMP – $0.03 and our favourite, the CRA itself – $0.02)
- $0.03 – crown corporations like CBC, CMHC and Atomic Energy (huh? who knew?)
- $0.06 – surplus, used to reduce the federal debt.
There you have it. Note that some of the things we love to hate, social assistance and employment insurance, were only about $0.06 cents of the dollar, whereas old age security is actually the largest single item after interest on the debt.Now we know!
