Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal |
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Revenue Quebec Time For the<br>Geese to Hiss |
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Beryl P. Wajsman | 4 April 2005 |
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“His taxes now prove, His great love for people, So wisely they're managed, They starve our poor souls.” ~ Charles Morris on William Pitt the Younger “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” ~ Jean-Baptiste Colbert once advised a French court that the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing. Well, the time may have come for some serious hissing. Revenue Quebec has recently released statements indicating its pride in collecting some $35 million of extra monies through a radically draconian, and egregiously invasive, “net worth” program that allows for sharing of information on all citizens horizontally between provincial departments and vertically with municipalities. In its violation of privacy rights, waste of government resources and preferred treatment of the privileged, it should be roundly condemned. The extra monies raised is a pittance in an approximately $60 billion budget. The extra costs of bureaucrats to enforce it and send out the 10,000 added assessments eats up a lot of the gains. But more than anything else, the violation of the fifty year status quo of privacy protection of taxpayers’ files should not be forgiven come election time. When Maurice Duplessis instituted revenue collection by this province following the1954 election, it was based on a flat 15% rate that was to be credited against transfer payments from And Our tax privacy rights were not acquired through the altruism of governors. It was the price for the tolerance of the governed for a tax system that was instituted as a temporary measure to finance World War I and stayed permanent even though no enabling legislation was ever passed to cover its inherent legal deficiencies. Instead of trying to collect more taxes, the government would serve us better if it cut back on the wild program spending in cultural, social, artistic and athletic endeavours that have come under state fiat and are nothing more than cheap pork-barrel vote grabbing schemes that we foot the bill for. We live under the yoke of a political culture reminiscent of Huey Long who once shrieked, “We will tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect”. An end to the pandering to corporate welfare would be an even better way to free tax dollars for essential services. Bleating and whining, business floods our capital with all manner of rationalizations for state supports. The rationalizations are always followed by none too subtle threats. The annual ritual of corporate executives mouthing platitudes about free markets and laissez-faire economics in front of the cameras, and then turning around behind the closed doors of government committees and demanding grants, subsidies and supports. While all Canadians have been drafted to be tax collectors under the GST Provisions, in Quebec Revenue has begun to use seizures on bank accounts with alarming regularity even for small amounts owed. The prejudice caused to credit reputations and banking relationships is rarely taken into account. Bureaucrats will tell you that they can exercise all these powers under the broad sweep of the infamous Sec.15 of the tax law. In so doing they choose to ignore a very important safeguard. Since the introduction of the Canadian and Quebec Charters of Rights and Freedoms all legislation is subject to the principles of “...fundamental justice…”. Jurisprudence has defined this to mean that due process must be followed at every stage of the enforcement process. This means the application of proper notice and equitable procedure among other requirements. We can survive without the funding of dance festivals and cooking weeks and boating regattas. We can succeed without corporate handouts. We can conduct our lives without cultural and societal dictates from the state. We can organize ourselves successfully without a bureaucracy bigger than What we can never abide is the loss of personal dignity. What we must never acquiesce to is the subornation of our inherent supremacy as individuals over the whims of the state. What we should never acknowledge as possible is the co-opting of our national will to complicity with an assault on our own rights. What we will never accept as legitimate is the notion that our status as free citizens is negotiable to the corporate interests of bureaucratic tyranny. Without equality of consideration as its guiding spirit the system itself, unchecked by any restraint of consequence, is doomed to fail the ordinary citizen. Though we are a society of laws and not of men we must keep our sense of outrage and steel the courage of our resolve to act on Gandhi’s injunction that, “When bad men make bad laws and when unprincipled officials compromise good ones, then it is time to be a man and to exercise responsible agitation to prevent governments from staggering drunkenly from wrong to wrong in order to preserve their own immortality.” -30- |