Article content continued

The tax on high income earners did not produce the $3 billion promised. Instead that tax category, the much-abused one per cent (most of whom got there by hard work and constructive astuteness, and not as most politicians endlessly imply, by being sociophobic exploiters, greedy speculator, and tax cheats), generated $4.6 billion less in federal taxes in 2016 than in 2015 and about 90 per cent of the decline is claimed by finance ministry sources to come from Alberta. In 2016, more than 30,000 fewer Canadians were in the earlier highest tax bracket, which began at $140,000. It always seems to come as a merciless surprise to politicians on the left, even the soft left, that most people consider that they have earned their incomes, that it is theirs as much as their private property is, and that governments do not have an unlimited, unchallengeable or unaccountable right to gouge an individual’s earned income.

It is a stupefying mystery that anyone in Ottawa, elected or otherwise, who has anything to do with the tax system, does not realize the dangers of taxing at higher rates than prevail in the United States

Authorized spokesmen for the Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, have claimed that this is a once-only occurrence because people who had the option crowded as much as they could of their incomes into the pre-tax hike year of 2015, reducing 2016 revenues, and that they will bounce back in 2017. All agree that a substantial part of the problem is the heavy hit to Alberta incomes from the absurd oil price, partly influenced by the various pipeline fiascoes and partly by the sand-bag job conducted by British Columbia against Alberta’ efforts to export oil via B.C. ports. It is painful to see Alberta in this straitjacket, tormented by its provincial neighbour, now governed by an antediluvian Green-NDP coalition, and tormented by the ineptitude, if not the malice, of the federal government. The judicial rejection of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which the federal government paid $4.5 billion for, has put Alberta under intolerable pressure and requires Ottawa to find some way to get the pipeline built or be convicted by the voters of being completely ineffectual, incompetent and of squandering $4.5 billion while assisting the silly hobgoblins who now run the B.C. government in turning innocent and long-suffering Alberta on the spit.