- Consulting with Canadians -

Anthony Christie's Submission in Response to Finance Canada's Employment Insurance Premium Rate-Setting Mechanism Consultation:

All social benefits should be paid for out of general revenues, not on the basis of confusing special taxes such as e.i. premiums, cpp contributions, etc.

General revenues should be raised on a much less regressive basis than currently, i.e. on excessive income and wealth, institutional (corporate, religious, etc.) taxation, high import tarrifs against anything that might even remotely be possible to obtain or manufacture in Canada, high export taxes for primary resources, no export taxes whatsoever on any value added to same, punitive taxation against excessive inheritance, gifting or other means of moving excessive wealth from one individual to another.

Such a massive simplification of our tax system would be salutary in far too many respects to list here, but for a start, ordinary people would have a fighting chance of understanding it. This would undoubtedly free up an entire sector of unproductive and parasitic people, i.e. tax accountants, tax lawyers, and others in the financial services, to do productive work, i.e. make handi-crafts, study abstract mathematics, meditate, play basketball, play music, build better mousetraps, clean up litter, etc.

The essential problem in this as in every human society is the disparity of wealth, power, justice, dignity. Our tax system must sooner or later address this.

Anthony Christie
321 Dodge Dr.
Kitchener, ON
N2P 2N2