A Christmas wish for the Canadian worker

As we celebrate another Christmas season with friends and family, let’s remember who will still be celebrating after all the food is eaten and all the presents are opened and the bills start coming in: the corporations who are making a killing off the backs of hard-working Canadians, taking advantage of years of consolidation, automation, globalization, low lending rates, deregulation, and most significantly, the lowering of corporate taxes.

This Christmas 2019, we are still waiting for the trickle-down we have been promised by the aforementioned increased efficiencies of the free market. The evidence of this promise being nothing but a lie is shown in the unfortunate fact that my generation will be the first one in modern history to have a worse outlook than the generations that preceded us. Millennials today have a much lower share of wealth than Gen Xers and Boomers did at the same point in their lives and we have much higher costs in essentials like housing and education, making it even harder to save for our futures.

The likes of Reagan, Mulroney and Thatcher promised us prosperity if only the holders of capital got to have greater choice in where their profits go. Forgetting how undemocratic that notion is, voters bought it and many still continue to do so, despite more and more proof that the money was stashed away instead of the savings being passed down. We were tricked into thinking more cheap goods would be our ticket to economic freedom. What we have been left with instead is a race-to-the-bottom, with our wages, pensions and benefits stagnating or being stripped away after decades of gains by the middle class.

With fewer of us belonging to unions, it’s getting harder and harder for the working Canadian to have a significant voice in the direction our society is going. Fortunately, we still have a relatively-strong democracy (as flawed as it is), but this won’t last forever if we don’t stand up. As with the primary intention of unions, there is power in numbers and the more of us who demand better and fairer treatment for the true creators of economic value, the better it will be for everyone.

So, if there’s one thing we can wish for this Christmas, it’s this simple request from our elected representatives: that the privileged at the top of the ladder pay a fairer share so that the public can decide how to distribute the fruits of our labour. Lowering the taxes of the middle class, like the Liberal federal government is promising, does nothing for helping fix our starving public services nor does it help remove our dependence on the free market for things that should be a human right like a living wage, housing, broadband internet, mental healthcare and post-secondary education.

I would also go a step further, to make it fairer for Canadian businesses competing with business in countries with lower tax rates, that we ask for the internationalization of tax rates. The best way we can achieve a continuously-better life for Canadians is if the global race-to-the-bottom is de-incentivized, and the privileged of the world aren’t able to stash away the wealth that belongs to us all. A globally-agreed-to minimum tax rate for the rich must be part of the plan.

So this Christmas, to help secure our future, share these wishes for the Canadian worker with your local MP. We can and will achieve the goal of making life better for everyone, if we fight for it together.

Merry Christmas!