For many commentators, the announcement was greeted as a bad joke: what is $1.37 a day worth, huh? This is what the $500 tax credit announced in the recent Quebec budget represents. However, it is not so negligible.
Analysts have frowned upon noting that the Legault government is supporting 94% of taxpayers to help them deal with inflation.
The « one-time amount to offset the increase in the cost of living », the official name of the new tax credit of 500 dollars, is indeed granted to anyone earning a net income of less than 100,000 dollars per year, regardless of income. family. In addition, a portion of the $500 is also available to those whose net income is less than $105,000.
Since Quebec has few very wealthy citizens, and even fewer very wealthy, that in fact, people who will be compensated!
The verdict therefore quickly fell: to target so broadly, the government was guilty of electoralism. Heaven, what a sin that none of his predecessors practiced (hum…)!
For my part, I was much more annoyed by the tone of the debate than by the government maneuver.
On the one hand, we heard virtuous people who underlined in broad strokes that they would donate these 500 dollars to an organization that really needed it! We have well understood the invitation to imitate them. This generosity proclaimed loud and clear should not, however, hide the fact that such a donation is itself covered by a tax credit which benefits the donor…
On the other, there were those worried about the inflationary spike that $500 might create with the ensuing avalanche of expenses (really!), including superfluous restaurant meals. However, not so long ago, wasn’t saving restaurants from the consequences of the pandemic part of a kind of collective mission? So we have to deduce that this whole sector is now doing better and no longer needs our support?
The most ratourous went there for their share of advice on the best investments to make profitable these 500 dollars fallen from the sky. As if we had hit the jackpot!
Finally, of the rising cost of living, there was little, if any, question. Yet that is what motivated the government to choose this election gift over another, because inflation concerns us all.
And he’s right: as proof, all the loud cries that we hear, even from those who earn more than 100,000 dollars a year, as soon as the price of gasoline increases by more than 2 cents per litre! Reports and analyzes are made of it, and the commentary industry is very indignant at the ups and downs in the price at the pump.
Would it therefore have been necessary, to be less criticized, for the CAQ government to imitate that of the New Democrats of British Columbia and strictly compensate drivers (individuals receiving $110 and businesses $165)? Or that it lowers taxes on gasoline, as in Alberta or Ontario (where it is indeed an electioneering promise by Prime Minister Doug Ford, because applicable only if he is re-elected)?
Too bad for those, including the poor, who don’t have a car; so much the worse for the environmental concern.
All in all, I prefer the Quebec approach, which at least recognizes the generalized backlash of inflation, which only people with very high incomes, like many in the mainstream media, can afford to ignore, to the point of pushing the mockery far.
I also saw there one of the reasons for the success of the Legault government that the polls, despite the rise of Éric Duhaime’s Conservative Party of Quebec, continue to reflect.
Furious identity debates dominate the public space while, on dry land, it is the cost of living that is the real subject of concern. Everyone — regardless of sex, color, sexual orientation and income! — is currently trying to readjust its lifestyle, so much inflation is shaking up our daily lives. Food, accommodation, clothing, heating, getting a haircut: everything really costs, but then really more expensive!
The government has therefore chosen to be there for everyone. Yes, this universal « everyone » that takes us out of the ever more pointed labels attached to individuals. It’s good to be reminded that we’re in the same boat — admittedly, not all in the same class, but subject to the same swell.
Now, this “everybody” is happy that we don’t snub the down-to-earth side of his life: that we don’t tell him that 75 dollars is enough for a family grocery store; that no one pretends that “his” 500 dollars will be burned at the restaurant; don’t make fun of Vachon cakes or other popular products that this extra $1.37 a day will allow him to continue buying. In short, he is happy to be spared the lessons. This is what the caquistes have managed to do.
Nor do I believe that the Legault government has made such a populist gesture. This action is rather in line with the approach adopted everywhere else in Canada during the pandemic: the implementation of a simple measure, without too many criteria, which offers one-time support in a moment of crisis that we do not didn’t really see it coming. If not optimal, it is fast, therefore effective.
Since inflation is here to stay, more targeted measures will now be needed—like the special $200 benefit that the government released at the start of the year for the 3.3 million less well-off Quebecers who right to the solidarity tax credit. Also more structuring, as the opposition demands, so that the nudge turns into a solid helping hand.
But, being one of those people who carefully monitor where their money is going, I also know that even small boosts are not to be neglected. And that those who make hot throats of it live well cut off from their society.
#dollars #government
