Thanks for all your support!

Hi everyone,

Thank you very much for all your support during these past two and a half months with the competition. It was a fun ride while it lasted. Unfortunately, I will not be progressing to the next round of the competition.

My sincerest thanks once more,

Tani

Response to Jeremy Dias

This post is in response to a video question from Jeremy Dias (video at the bottom).

Hi Jeremy,

Thank you for your questions. You brought up some very valid points, that I will do my best to address one by one here.

First, adjusting the guaranteed annual income payment dependent on location. There are several reasons I am opposed to this. One, it makes the system a lot more complex and takes away from the idea that the $7500 is not need-based. You would need to set up an administrative board to oversee the different payment levels. Furthermore, even within Toronto for example, there would have to be adjustments, because living right downtown costs more than living just a few kilometres away. Secondly, it’s unnecessary. The $7500 is not designed to be a livable income, but rather, when combined with minimal work effort, it should become a livable income (that’s why I have said that disability assistance and similar programs should be kept). Areas with higher costs of living tend to have better access to jobs. In Northern Ontario for example, yes it’s easier to live off $7500, but it’s also harder to find well-paying year-round work, so the two factors balance out. I don’t want to go into great detail here, but this system would also work especially well in the Atlantic Provinces. The Maritimes have a lot of season employment and the current system of welfare and EI creates a quite a few problems. This guaranteed income would bring a lot more financial stability to people living in the area.

Second, you mentioned the fact that the 24% is too high for low income earners. I have addressed this issue before with other candidates, and in my community video. Basically, the $7500 (which is a fixed sum) and the 24% in the other direction work against each other to create a proportional tax system that’s proportional at all levels of income. To a low income earner, getting $7500 from the government far outweighs paying an income tax rate of 24% (in fact for everyone earning less than $31 250 of income, the $7500 payment is more than their tax burden at 24%). The reason why I chose to not have a graduated system is because of simplicity, better forecasts of revenue generation and compliance. For both of these points that I just made, I would direct you to my community event video, where I explain these in a slightly different way (at 2:07 – the progressive aspect, 3:42 – flat taxes).

Third, on foreign aid. Here’s where we seem to completely agree, but I may have been a bit unclear in my initial video. My idea was not to send them Canadian goods, but Canadian machinery. So, instead of us sending them corn for example, we would send them machinery to help them develop a sustainable agriculture industry. I don’t think I need to convince you on the benefits of this, cause it seems to be exactly what you are saying as well. I’m glad we agree!

Hope that addressed your concerns,

Tani

Jeremy’s Original Video Question

Response to Emmy Marshall-Hill

This post is in response to Emmy Marshall-Hill’s question regarding my claims of a simpler tax system (original video question at the bottom).

Hi Emmy,

Thank you for your question. To clarify my claims: the current system has 5 different brackets, at irregular and arbitrary intervals. There are exemptions and deductibles and credits. I’d like to direct you to the Government of Canada website on the federal tax rates. You’ll see a complex tax chart, which has you use different columns depending on your income and you need to carry over numbers. A certain amount of tax is collected from paycheques, based on government estimates of your income, but obviously those are never fully accurate, so people have to file stressful 4-page long returns during ‘tax season’. The negative income tax captures into a neat system all the deductibles and credits, and collects 24% directly from paycheques. That’s what I mean by my plan being simple. With one easy calculation, we can have a tax system that is fair and progressive, and better able to address the needs of low income earners.

Hope that answers your question,

Tani

Original question:

Response to Video Question 2

This is my response to CBC’s question: How would you address the crisis in the automotive industry (video below). In my opinion this simplifies to another question: Should the government bail out the big three. My short answer to this question is no. And there are several reasons for that. First off, the automotive industry, as it pertains to the big three of Chrysler, Ford and GM is unsustainable. These companies have deep-rooted problems due to poor management and a bailout now would only push off their inevitable bankruptcy. Experts are predicting that if the $14 billion package in the US makes its way to the companies, even with additional help from the Canadian government, it would give them a maximum of 2 additional years before more financial help is needed. In order to avoid this, a complete structural change is needed, towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly business model. The companies offered no such change to the U.S. congressional committee. Furthermore, experts agree that our economy is in transition, towards the knowledge industry. In the future, most of our well-paying jobs will be in this sector of the economy, not manufacturing. Also, a recent statistic showed there were no major net losses in manufacturing jobs in the last month, because while Ford and GM were laying off workers, Toyota and Honda were hiring in almost matching numbers. So, if in the short run autoworkers are switching companies and in the long run our jobs will be in a different industry altogether, then there is far less of a need to spend billions of dollars of tax money to push off the inevitable for a few months to two years. If the government has to get involved in our current economic situation, it must help to create the jobs of the future, which will be greener and in our developing knowledge industry. Thank you.

Official Entry Video

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This is the official site of the campaign to elect Dritan Kallamata as Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.