2012 Canadian Federal Budget – Lets go Shopping!



PM Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty excited to
release the 2012 Canadian Budget. Afterwards, they plan
to hit New York's 5th Ave. to shop, shop, shop.



In the recent federal budget, Finance Minister Flaherty announced that cross border shopping is a priority for the federal conservatives. They would “do the right thing” and “fix the injustices.” You see, Canadians spend an estimated 14 million dollars a day cross border shopping. This practice enhances the economy of the US, but does the opposite for Canadian society. For every 1 million dollars spent in the US, Canada loses out on at least 2 full time jobs and as many as 5 part time jobs. If we are to leave things the way they have been, we will have lost the opportunity to generate close to 50 billion dollars in economic activity, 10,000 full time jobs, 25,000 part time jobs, 650 million dollars in lost sales tax revenue and 10s of millions more in taxes collected from those working in retail, in shipping, their bosses and their landlords, as well as the cities and towns who collect property taxes from them. The losses are just too enormous for cross border shopping to be left unchecked. Even the “stuff” Canadians bring home from their shopping in the US will be, sooner than not, in our landfills where the tax payer will have to foot the bill to pick up, and deliver that “stuff” to the landfill, which is a huge piece of land the tax payers purchased...for American bought “stuff.”

”Canada is a different country than the US. We do things differently here and because of that we need to respect our own country and her systems of taxation and service delivery,” said Flaherty...NOT!!!!! This is what a responsible finance minister would say. Unfortunately, Canada doesn’t have one of those. In fact, Minister Flaherty did not address cross border shopping losses to Canada. Instead, he sweetened the pot for shoppers by encouraging more cross border shopping, increasing the 24 and 48 hour limits to how much can be purchased duty free. Either this is pandering or it's ignorance to the highest degree. Canadians who really don’t see the destructive nature of cross border shopping should be educated to understand fully the implications of cross border shopping.  Canadians who just don’t care to support Canadian society and want “stuff” cheap no matter what the cost to their own community, well they are the reason for regulation. Either you respect your country or you don’t. Harper clearly is not backing the interests of Canadians with this plank and should be called out for it. Harper told Canadians this budget is about creating jobs and enhancing our economy. How does this do either?

I thought I should mention...

The first part of this article is wishful thinking. The Harper conservatives do not have the intellect or the creativity to “do the right thing” or “fix the injustices.” They would have to build a jail for that and after spending 30 billion dollars on war jets there’s nothing left in the cookie jar. The numbers I used for cross border shopping are readily available on government sites and only reflect current spending. With the new allowable amounts we can deduct with great certainty, those numbers will increase significantly. I thought I should also disclose that I have been in retail for over 25 years and have been affected directly by cross border shopping.

If spending increases by only 25%, here is what we would be giving up:

$6billion in local economic activity

12,500 full time retail jobs

30,000 part time retail jobs

$800million in HST (This has been calculated using the 13% Ontario HST amount. Some provinces are higher and some lower.)

$hundreds of millions of dollars towards income tax, corporate taxes, municipal taxes (I’m sure there is more, but I think you get the picture)