The Flat Tax and the Alberta model.

Prosperity requires that people abandon old ways of doing things, old industries and bet on new ways and new industries. To achieve that transition, capital must move from yesterday’s industries to those of the future. The move is a bet. People experiment. Experiments must be financed. Financing requires mobility of capital: people having the incentives to switch money from one enterprise to another. If this switch is taxed – and capital gains taxes are a tax on just such a switch – the incentives to shift resources out of the old and toward a better match diminish.

The consequences of limiting the ownership of foreign stock in RRSPs.

The consequences of limiting the ownership of foreign stock in RRSPs.

Governments in Canada draw heavily on the productive resources of the economy, more so actually than at any time in the history of the country except during World War II. The average Canadian family pays out more than 46% of its income in taxes, as opposed to 33% in 1961. Its total tax bill shot up more than 1,286% since 1961 and it now accounts for more of the average Canadian budget than shelter, food, and clothing combined. Of the four countries with which we trade most, it is in Canada that the overall burden of taxation has risen the most over the last three decades. Income taxes for their part have climbed at twice their rate of increase in the U.S.