The Fraser Institute is well known for spreading misleading right-wing information. Many people also question the think tank’s credibility given they receive millions of dollars from foreign donors and people like the Koch brothers.

But in a new Twitter thread from Toby Sanger, Executive Director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, lays out exactly how the Fraser Institute uses misleading data to further their austerity agenda.

Here is the entire thread below:

The @FraserInstitute has SO MUCH money (including from the Koch brothers) and so many staff: why do they so often produce reports that distort the truth so grossly? — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

Case in point: their report today on spending on taxes and growth in taxes vs necessities of life https://t.co/GquEUq3lUF — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

They include in the family tax bill pretty much all taxes, including corporate profit taxes, other taxes paid by corpus, natural resources royalties, etc–but then don't include retained profits in the denominator. — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

More importantly, they take their calculations of growth from 1961 and ignore everything those taxes pay for and all the important social programs introduced since then. — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

While some may be nostalgic about the past, 1961 was before we had national medicare/health care (1966/1984), before CPP (1965), before UI (1971) and before much else. — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

The bulk of our taxes go to pay for these public services and social programs, which were skeletons of their future selves in 1961. — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

For instance, total full-time enrolment in post secondary education was less than 130,000 in 1961, less than 1% of the population; now it's 1.6 million, close to 5% of the population. — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

The biggest area of government spending in Canada is of course health care. Overall Canadians spend about half of what Americans spend per capita on health care, yet our life expectancy is 3 years longer. — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019

In so many areas, the costs of public services are lower, better quality, and far more equitable than the private alternatives — including for national public pharmacare. This is what our taxes pay for. — Toby Sanger (@toby_sanger) August 1, 2019