The federal government ignored the pleas for tax relief from Canadians in its own focus groups ahead of the 2024 federal budget.
Canadians in the focus groups, commissioned by Finance Canada, called on the government to reduce foreign spending and cut taxes in the budget. Instead, Canadians received tax hikes and more spending.
Finance Canada paid nearly $130,000 to Environics Research, which formed focus groups made up of 74 Canadians from various backgrounds, provinces, and socioeconomic levels to hear about their experiences with the economy and what they think needs to change.
“Most participants felt the Canadian economy is in a bad state and used words such as ‘unaffordable,’ ‘declining,’ ‘expensive,’ “rough,’ ‘strained,’ ‘terrible,’ ‘unstable’ and ‘unpredictable’ to describe it,” a report from the research group said.
The report said the focus group participants felt this way due to the rise in the prices of groceries, housing, gas, utilities, fuel, insurance, and mortgage payments.
According to the report, people in the prairies cited an increase in crime and homelessness as an indicator of the declining economy as well, while those from Atlantic provinces said they were concerned about potential layoffs.
The report also addressed retirement. Younger participants in the groups said they would like to retire but cannot begin to being able to do so while grappling with the “immediate challenges of making ends meet.”
When asked what the government could do to help the working class in Canada, a few mentioned the government’s $10-a-day childcare and climate action incentive payment, but the report said there was “little sense of what the government could do to support the middle class apart from cutting taxes.”
Among some of the recommendations Canadians had for the next federal budget were to cut taxes, particularly the carbon tax, lower interest rates, and reduce foreign spending.
“Canadians are struggling, but instead of listening to Canadians and making our lives more affordable, the government is making life more expensive with its tax hikes and crazy spending,” Franco Terrazzano, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said.
“Budget 2024 was a disaster. The government is hiking taxes, adding more debt onto the backs of Canadians’ kids and grandkids and wasting more than $1 billion a week on interest charges.”
In addition to the requests to lower taxes and cut spending, the focus group identified some measures to improve the economy, including requests for the government to control the prices of food, rent, and other products, give interest-free student loans, and invest in mental health, homeless shelters, and “smaller-scale affordable housing” projects.
“We don’t need more government; we need less government. That means the government should cut spending, cut taxes, and balance the budget,” Terrazzano said. “If the government wants Canadians to get ahead, the first thing it should do is stop taking so much money from us.”
According to the report, most of the participants did not feel that the federal government had “played much of a role” in causing inflation. A few of the participants, particularly in the prairies, mentioned the impact of the carbon tax and the government printing money as the cause of inflation.
Terrazzano said the government, in fact, bears quite a bit of responsibility.
“The Government of Canada deserves the large part of the blame for this high inflation because its central bank printing hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air, and the government hiked taxes, spent money like crazy and ran massive deficits,” Terrazzano said.
“This government has no plan to balance the budget or save money. This government’s only plan is to take as much money from taxpayers as it can.”