My Postal Code Is Not a Tax Return

I was called an “Eastern parasite” on Facebook the other day.

This was not based on a detailed examination of my finances. The gentleman😐 had not seen my tax returns, reviewed my income, calculated how much federal tax I pay, or performed an actuarial analysis of the government services I consume now, or over my entire life (much of it spent in the GTA—another aggrieved region).

He figured out I live on the East Coast.

That was enough.

I understand the thinking. I have heard variations of it for decades, particularly from Alberta. Alberta pays more into Canada than it gets back. Atlantic Canada gets more than it pays. Therefore, Albertans are supporting people like me.

Therefore, parasite.

Apparently, I Could Move West and Be Cured

I have a job. I pay federal income tax.

Were I doing roughly the same job in Alberta for roughly the same income, my federal taxes would not be dramatically different. The same federal tax brackets apply whether I live in New Brunswick or Alberta.

So:

Me in New Brunswick: Eastern parasite.

Me in Alberta: hardworking Albertan whose tax dollars support Eastern parasites.

Same person and work. Roughly the same income and the same federal tax contribution.

Different postal code.

Apparently, moving to Alberta has remarkable restorative powers. I would not need to work harder, retrain, start a business, or increase my income. I would simply cross a provincial boundary and be fiscally redeemed.

This is a clue that something is wrong with the "parasite" argument.

Who Is “Alberta”?

Dougald Lamont recently wrote about the Free Alberta Strategy, a document used to make the intellectual case for greater Alberta autonomy and, increasingly, Alberta separation.

Lamont asks a question that should be obvious but rarely is.

When people say “Alberta pays,” who exactly are they talking about?

The Free Alberta Strategy, according to Lamont, focuses overwhelmingly on oil and gas while barely accounting for the rest of Alberta's economy. He notes that oil represents about $88 billion of a roughly $400 billion economy and employs only about 5.3 per cent of Alberta's workforce.

In other words, most Albertans do not work in O&G, and most of Alberta's GDP is generated elsewhere. Yet the political rhetoric routinely turns the financial performance of one highly profitable, capital-intensive industry into the collective accomplishment of an entire population.

The tax numbers raise the same problem.

Using Statistics Canada tax-filer data, Lamont notes that half of Alberta tax filers make less than $44,100 and contribute only 3.8 per cent of the province's income tax collected. The top one per cent, about 35,000 people, pay more than a quarter. About 350 people in the top 0.01 per cent pay roughly one dollar in twenty of all income tax paid in Alberta.

As Lamont rather effectively puts it, the taxes paid by those 350 people are what the strategy calls “Alberta's.”

That does not mean ordinary Albertans contribute nothing. Obviously they do.

It means that saying “Alberta pays” hides an enormous amount of information about who actually pays.

And that brings me back to my Facebook friend.

Tribal Bookkeeping

The man who called me an Eastern parasite knows nothing about my finances. Neither of us has seen the other's tax return.

Yet he believes he has standing to identify me as a recipient and himself as a contributor.

How?

Well, geography.

He has taken the net fiscal position of Alberta and assigned it to himself personally.

Then he has taken the net fiscal position of Atlantic Canada, and assigned it to me personally.

Every Albertan gets collective credit for the taxes paid by Alberta's richest taxpayers and most profitable businesses.

Every Maritimer gets collective blame for the federal transfers received.

This is not accounting. This is tribal bookkeeping.

Why Stop at the Alberta Border?

Why is a province the correct geographical unit for deciding who is a parasite? Why stop there?

Within Alberta, Calgary and Edmonton generate enormous amounts of economic activity and tax revenue. Presumably there are smaller Alberta communities where the identifiable government spending per person exceeds the tax revenue generated there.

Are those communities parasites?

Maybe Calgary should leave Alberta.

Then again, within Calgary there will be neighbourhoods where residents have much higher incomes and pay far more tax than residents of other neighbourhoods.

Why should someone in Mount Royal support someone living in a poorer part of the city?

Parasites!

We can keep going.

Perhaps one side of a street pays more property tax than the other.

Maybe the people at number 42 should demand fiscal independence from the deadbeats at number 38. 

Sidebar

The same sort of fiscal imbalance exists inside cities. Peer-reviewed research on municipal finances has repeatedly found sprawling, spatially extensive development more expensive to service. A meta-analysis of 125 local fiscal studies found that residential land uses, on average, consumed about $1.18 in attributed municipal spending for every dollar of revenue they generated, while commercial and industrial land uses consumed just 44 cents. The exact balance varies from place to place, but the idea that one geographic or economic part of a community subsidizes another is hardly a uniquely Albertan phenomenon. 

At some point the absurdity becomes obvious.

Or we could stop drawing circles altogether and look at individual taxpayers.

Do that, and we discover the shocking truth behind much of this grievance.

People with high incomes generally pay more income tax than people with low incomes.

Government spending is not returned to each citizen in exact proportion to the taxes that citizen paid.

That is how progressive taxation and government work.

The Alberta grievance industry draws a provincial border through this ordinary fiscal reality and declares the statistical result evidence of regional theft.

But the boundary is a political choice.

The province is the unit of calculation because Alberta is the political identity being mobilized.

Strangely Collectivist Libertarians

There is an irony in all this.

A great deal of Alberta separatist and autonomy rhetoric comes from people who describe themselves as individualists, libertarians, or advocates of personal responsibility.

There is nothing particularly individualistic about declaring the taxes paid by millions of other people to be “our money.”

The argument is remarkably collectivist.

The income of millions of individuals and businesses becomes Alberta's wealth.

The taxes paid disproportionately by a relatively small number of extremely high-income people become what Albertans paid.

Then millions of people living somewhere else are sorted into a geographic debtor class.

I am no longer a person.

I am The East.

The guy insulting me is no longer whatever his employment income, tax bill and personal circumstances say he is.

He is Alberta.

He has appropriated the tax contribution of oil executives, engineers, entrepreneurs, wealthy investors and corporations he has never met and is waving the total around as if he personally wrote Ottawa the cheque.

Then he calls me a parasite.

I almost admire the confidence.

If Alberta were to separate, the very few who pay so much of the tax base in that province would consider the many who do not parasites. I assure you, they have no intention of showering the commonwealth of Alberta with their billion$. Their aim is to keep it for themselves.

Provinces Are Not People

A province having a positive net fiscal balance does not make every resident a net contributor.

A province receiving Equalization does not make every resident a net beneficiary.

An Albertan does not inherit the tax contribution of the richest Albertans as a personal moral achievement.

And I do not inherit my current province's fiscal capacity as a character flaw.

Poilievre's "Worst food inflation in the G7" Claim Examined

I keep seeing this cited, even after many months. The "Canada's food inflation is the worst in the G7" claim Pierre Poilievre keeps making:

The Conservative website still has this petition up:

If the "worst in the G7" claim true? Probably, but only if you select the right start and end dates—but I'm going to leave that there, and just assume there's a span of time when this is true.

This claim is only relevant if you ignore the false equivalence in comparing Canada to the rest of the G7.

Lets look at this odd language.

The worst food inflation in the G7 isn't a global phenomenon.

Is this saying that food inflation in Canada is not due to any global influence?🙄 Or that the "worst" aspect of food inflation isn't caused by forces outside of Canada? The first meaning isn't defensible. The second is plausible—though not a clear meaning—even if it represents a small fraction of the total inflation.

Rhetorically, this sentence, and what follows, pushes the reader toward an indefensible meaning:

Canada’s food inflation is not really global in origin. It is caused by Canadian government policy.

That does not follow.

A global phenomenon can still produce uneven national outcomes.

The sentence is oddly phrased because it conflates those two different claims.

A cleaner version would be:

“Global pressures contributed to food inflation, but Canada’s especially poor G7 ranking suggests domestic factors also played a role.”

That would be fair. But politics doesn't play fair. Remember:

"It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be plausible..." —Tom Flanagan, former Harper advisor.

It's not fair to compare Canada to the rest of the G7. Even a brief look at our G7 peers (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) shows it is obvious that Canada is structurally weird inside the G7.

Canada is geographically enormous, thinly populated, cold, and highly urbanized along a narrow southern band. That means long transport chains, seasonal dependence on imports, high cold-chain costs, and large regional differences. Canada is also both a major food exporter and a major food importer. Agriculture Canada says Canada exported about $100.3 billion in agriculture and food products in 2024, while also emphasizing that the sector depends heavily on international trade. Farm Credit Canada also describes Canada as both a major exporter and importer of agriculture and food products.

That matters because Canada does not simply “grow lots of food, therefore groceries should be cheap.” Canada exports a lot of grains, oilseeds, pulses, meat, fish, and processed products. But Canadians consume a lot of products that are seasonal, imported, greenhouse-grown, highly processed, or dependent on U.S./global supply chains: fresh fruit, leafy greens, coffee, cocoa, citrus, spices, and many packaged foods. Statistics Canada’s food inflation analysis has repeatedly pointed to weather, commodity shocks, reduced crop yields, cattle inventories, disease, tariffs, and imported-food pressures as causes of grocery inflation.

It's a made-in-Canada crisis driven by Liberal inflation and hidden taxes on groceries.

When you tax those who grow, ship, and store food, you tax everyone who buys the food.

"Liberal inflation" is obvious rhetoric. Suffice to say that the pandemic, Russia-Ukraine war, lasting global supply and labour disruptions, and the incredibly stupid USA-Israel-Iran war were certainly not caused by Canada.

But that second sentence concerning taxation is true, to an extent. It is also why Canada already zero-rates most basic groceries for GST/HST. The problem is that Poilievre is extending the argument from direct taxes on groceries to any upstream tax or regulatory cost affecting food production, transport, storage, packaging, or retail.

The logical conclusion here is that anything vital should not be taxed. That is not impossible as a philosophy, but it is a huge tax-policy claim. Governments would either need to raise other taxes, cut spending, or accept larger deficits. And every exemption creates boundary fights: what counts as “food”? What counts as “essential”? Is a greenhouse tomato essential? Coffee? Candy? Restaurant food? Organic strawberries flown in during winter? Delivery apps? Refrigerated warehouse electricity keeping life-giving ice cream frozen?

Poilievre is treating food as if it can be surgically isolated from the general economy. But food production uses fuel, roads, electricity, buildings, land, labour, packaging, finance, insurance, and imports. If every input touching food is treated as tax-exempt because food is essential, then the exemption expands very quickly from groceries to much of the economy.

But, all that aside, are these "whereas" statements even true?

The Liberal industrial carbon tax on fertilizer and farm equipment makes producing food more expensive…

This is worded to mislead.

There is an industrial carbon-pricing system, and it can affect high-emitting industrial producers, including parts of the fertilizer supply chain.

But the phrase “on fertilizer and farm equipment” is sloppy. Canada does not have a simple retail “carbon tax on fertilizer” or “carbon tax on farm equipment” in the way that sentence suggests. Canada has a fertilizer emissions reduction target, but Agriculture Canada says that target is not a mandatory reduction in fertilizer use and is aimed at reducing fertilizer emissions while maintaining or improving yields.

On farm equipment, the old federal fuel charge had specific farm exemptions. The government’s own 2018 backgrounder said the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act provided farmers relief from the fuel charge for fuels used in tractors, trucks, and other farm machinery, using exemption certificates. Senate debate material also stated that gasoline and diesel used by farmers in eligible farming machinery, such as trucks and tractors, was already exempt under the GGPPA.

And the consumer fuel charge itself was set to zero effective April 1, 2025. The federal government said it ceased application of the federal fuel charge and removed requirements for provinces and territories to have a consumer-facing carbon price as of that date.

To what extent any regulation adds to food prices, what does it come to, if anything? A quarter penny per potato? More? Less? We don't know. We are left to conveniently assume it is something present and substantial.

The Liberal plastics ban makes packaging food more expensive and causes food to spoil faster…

The actual single-use plastics ban mostly targets bags, cutlery, straws, stir sticks, ring carriers, and certain takeout-style foodservice ware. That is not the same as a broad ban on grocery-store food packaging. I work in that industry. Plastic remains everywhere. Check out meat trays, frozen foods, bags of apples...

Meanwhile, based on this position, we may have to assume that the CPC is not concerned with plastics in our environment. Or in our brains.

The second hidden Liberal carbon tax on gas and diesel makes food transportation more expensive.

This is almost certainly referring to the Clean Fuel Regulations. The government says the Clean Fuel Regulations do not set a fuel price but require fuel suppliers to reduce the lifecycle carbon intensity of gasoline and diesel produced or imported for use in Canada.

Supporters call it a regulation, not a tax. Critics call it a hidden carbon tax because compliance costs can show up in pump prices. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that, by 2030, the Clean Fuel Regulations would impose household costs ranging from $231 for lower-income households to $1,008 for higher-income households, measured as annual cost impacts.

What portion of that would go toward food prices is unclear.

The implication is that the cost of cleaner fuels aren't worth it. I partially agree. Let's ditch using fuel altogether—but I digress.

As for the Weakest and Most Loaded Claim...

And whereas Mark Carney’s inflation tax, resulting from higher deficits and money printing, has pushed food inflation to the highest in the G7.

This sentence is a political blender. It takes a real outcome — high food inflation — adds a real but broad concern — deficits can be inflationary — then throws in “money printing” and assigns the whole thing to Mark Carney. It sounds causal, but it does not prove causation. It is designed to make a complex food-price problem feel like one man’s tax.

There is a serious debate over how much of Canada’s pandemic inflation came from fiscal stimulus. But credible sources, including the Bank of Canada and IMF, do not describe it as simply a made-in-Canada policy error. They point to the interaction between stimulus-driven demand and worldwide supply shocks: energy, food, shipping, commodities, labour disruption, and the Ukraine war. “Government policy mattered” is fair. “Mostly Liberal inflation and money printing” is rhetoric.

But current food inflation in 2025–26 is tied to supply-chain shocks, tariffs, weather, import dependence, the Canadian dollar, high transportation costs, short growing seasons, and grocery-sector structure—standard Canadian stuff for years plus a large pinch of recent USA tariff policy.

Absent here is any "government deficit = high food prices" evidence.

The "money printing" claim is oft-cited by Poilievre, and has me wondering if he knows anything about modern economics. He at least seems unconcerned to appear lost in, at best, the mid-20th century of that dismal science.

I assume it is populist shorthand. It certainly plays to the "take us back to the gold standard" types that support him.

News flash: The Bank of Canada doesn't turn on the presses when the government borrows money.

“Money printing” is a lazy phrase. In a modern economy, most money is created through bank lending, and most borrowing is private. Inflation usually comes from demand, credit, supply shocks, energy costs, wages, profits, imports, and policy all colliding. Reducing that to “the government printed money” is politics, not analysis.

Finally, I wanted to address this:

Whereas Mark Carney and this Liberal government have driven food prices up by 40% since taking power.

Did you catch it?

“Mark Carney and this Liberal government” puts Carney first, making him the face of the accusation. A casual reader hears: Carney took power, and food went up 40%. But the 40% number only works if the timeline reaches back to the Liberals taking office in 2015, not Carney personally, who has only been PM since 2025.

“Have driven” is also doing heavy lifting. It does not say “food prices have risen.” It says Carney and the Liberals caused the increase. That converts a price statistic into a blame claim without proving causation.

“Food prices” is broad enough to sound like groceries, restaurants, and general household pain all at once. It avoids the more precise categories: food purchased from stores, restaurant food, meat, produce, dairy, etc. That vagueness helps the claim feel larger.

“40%” gives the sentence numerical authority. A specific number makes the sentence feel factual and measured, even though the key dispute is not only the number but the attribution and timeline.

(The 40% figure seem plausible, even likely.)

The Real Cause of Grocery Inflation

We need more competition in Canada’s grocery oligopoly. Poilievre’s claim that cutting Liberal taxes and regulations will solve the problem skips the obvious question: why would dominant grocers pass those savings on? Without real competitive pressure, cost cuts can just become corporate margin.

Long before COVID and long before Carney, credible global food-security researchers were warning that climate change, population growth, dietary shifts, and fragile supply chains would put upward pressure on food costs and increase price volatility. That does not absolve Canadian governments of responsibility for domestic policy choices, but it does make “made-in-Canada food inflation” a very selective story. Ten years ago FAO warned us. As did the IPCC.

Poilievre is using food inflation as a populist entry point for a familiar anti-tax, anti-regulation message. The grievance is real. His proposed cure is not demonstrated. Cutting costs for producers, shippers, or grocers does not guarantee lower prices for consumers, especially in an oligopoly. Without competition, savings can and would disappear into corporate margins.

Poilievre doesn't care about the price of eggs. He cares that he can leverage the grievance for political gain.

It certainly worked for Trump.

Political Spin, Populism, and Why Section 15 Is Back

Section 15 is returning with a simple purpose: to examine political spin, one claim at a time.

That raises an obvious question. If I often focus on Conservative messaging, am I simply writing a partisan blog?

The honest answer is: partly, yes. I have political views. I am not pretending to float above politics as a neutral referee with no opinions. Most people who claim that are fooling themselves or trying to fool someone else.

But I am also not especially at home in any political party.

Politically, I am homeless. I am not a Liberal. I do not support the NDP. I am still Green in a lot of ways, though I can tolerate the odd oil pipeline or two without losing my mind. I have long identified, at least instinctively, as libertarian, but I also hold some of those knee-jerk reactions down with both hands.

That is because the enemy of ordinary people is not always government. Sometimes government is clumsy, arrogant, wasteful, or captured by interests that do not represent us. That should be criticized. But we are also clearly battling an oligarchy that does not represent us either. Its members often talk like libertarians, but the freedom they want is usually freedom for the few, not freedom for the many.

So no, I am not writing from some clean partisan headquarters. I am writing as someone who distrusts concentrated power, whether it wears a government badge, a corporate logo, or a party pin.

But there is a difference between having a perspective and abandoning standards.

My concern with today’s Conservative messaging, especially from the Conservative Party of Canada and its aligned media ecosystem, is not merely that I disagree with it. I disagree with plenty of things. The deeper issue is the way populist anger is being cultivated and aimed.

There are many Canadians who feel squeezed, ignored, priced out, talked down to, and left behind. That anger is real. Young people, in particular, have good reason to feel that the economic promises made to earlier generations have not been kept. Housing is brutal. Wages have not kept pace with costs. Secure work is harder to find. The future feels narrower than it should.

Some Conservative policy arguments speak to those conditions, and some may even make sense within the economic system we currently have. I do not intend to dismiss every Conservative argument as bad merely because it is Conservative.

But I am deeply skeptical that the party’s leadership is truly disturbed by the plight of working people, young people, or the economically insecure, except where those groups can be turned into useful political weapons. Past Conservative positions on labour, unionism, public services, taxation, regulation, and corporate power matter. They tell us something about whose pain is taken seriously and whose power is protected.

The modern populist style often works by taking real frustration and redirecting it toward convenient enemies. Immigrants. Public servants. Teachers. Unions. “Elites,” vaguely and selectively defined. The media. The courts. The poor. The cities. The provinces. The federal government. Whoever is useful that week.

This is where political spin becomes dangerous. It stops being persuasion and becomes a machine for resentment.

A major source for Section 15 will be the political material I see circulating online, especially on Facebook. That includes posts from Conservative MPs, partisan pages, and aligned accounts such as Canada Proud. These sources often do not simply argue a position. They frame issues in ways that strip out context, inflame division, and turn complicated problems into easy targets.

That does not mean only Conservatives spread misinformation or disinformation. They do not. Liberals do it. New Democrats do it. Activists do it. Interest groups do it. Media organizations can mislead by framing, omission, or repetition.

But right now, the Conservative political ecosystem in Canada is especially reliant on populist grievance politics. It frequently presents itself as the voice of ordinary people while leaning on messaging that protects established economic interests, weakens solidarity, and divides people who should have common cause.

That is why Section 15 will often focus there.

The standard will be simple. I will take one claim, one slogan, one meme, one post, or one talking point, and ask what it leaves out. What is the framing? What is the emotional trigger? What facts are missing? What comparison is unfair? Who benefits if people believe it?

This will not be an attempt to prove that one party is always wrong and another is always right. That would be lazy. It will be an attempt to slow down political messaging long enough to see how it works.

Because spin depends on speed. It wants people to react before they think.

Section 15 will be about taking that extra moment.

SCC Crookes Hyperlinking Ruling Set for Tomorrow

Is merely having a hyperlink to material deemed libelous enough to be found guilty of disseminating libel? The Supreme Court of Canada will release its ruling on this case tomorrow!

I suspect p2pnet will have the first analysis up.

Kinsella Agrees With Me

I had argued here that the campaign themes used by all except the Ontario Liberal Party were off the mark. People, in uncertain economic times, don't vote for change. They don't vote for a party with a poor reputation in Ontario for running things (fair, or not fair, that's the NDP), or for a party with a reputation of controversy and which runs on a platform of killing jobs (that be the PCs).

They vote for a steady hand at the wheel.

Warren Kinsella made the same point in his Sun column yesterday.

Rob Ford: We're Great Because He Is

There's much to discuss in this article, but I thought I'd amaze you with this tidbit concerning Mayor Ford's deep affection for the City of Toronto:

...asked what he loves about Toronto, the mayor said: “This is a great city. We’ve cleaned it up, there’s less graffiti, we’ve made it a safer city.”

or, by analogy

... asked what he loves about his wife, the mayor said: “She's a great wife. I’ve got her to to be neater, cleaner, and less violent.”

Meanwhile, Federally, the Shenanigans Continue

Want to learn more about the Auditor General's investigations into the Harper Government's military cost overruns? The Harper Government's former do-nothing 'integrity' commissioner's half-million dollar severance package? The Harper Government's mismanaged renovations on Parliament Hill?

Too bad.

The Harper Government *majority* on the public accounts committee forced the committee to go in-camera, and voted to not review those reports. How convenient. As a result, opposition members can't even comment on what was discussed.

Yes, we can read those reports, but Parliament will be acting on them, as the committee won't. How convenient.

Federally, transparency and accountability is getting worse and worse. The Harper Government figures the less we know, the less we will criticize.

We know the result. As we've already seen with gravy train gazebo Clement, jet-setter MacKay, and gold-embossed Baird, the Harper Government is very capable of the worse of excesses.

The more we tolerate this secrecy, the worse it will become.

Oh, as you may have noticed, I am constantly calling this government The Harper Government, just as his Prime Ministerialness likes it.

Might as well make him wear it.

And the winner is...

So, which pollster had it right?

I recorded the last polls of the election here.

Here they are compared to the results.

Source	Liberal	PC	NDP	Green	Dates	Details
RESULTS	37.6%	35.4%	22.7%	2.9%	Oct 6	THE ELECTION!
Angus Reid	33%	36%	26%	5%	Oct 2-4	Online; Sample: 2223; 2.1% 19/20
Ipsos-Reid	41%	31%	25%		Sep 30-Oct3	Sample 1020; 3.1% 19/20
Abacus	37%	34%	24%	4%	Oct 3-4	Sample 1001; 3.1% 19/20

Abacus has the best call, perhaps because their sample was concentrated closest to election day.

The huge Forum Research Poll, also under that link, didn't report percentages, but did make a seat call of 45/45/17, which was damn close, and nailed the NDP count. Given that that poll Forum conducted the poll over the weekend, days away from the election, the reason for the discrepancy is clear.

Ipsos-Reid was way off, but also was working with the oldest data, and a smaller data set sprawled over many days.

For those who don't know, the final count was 53/37/17, the largest minority possible.