Investing in Our People: Taxes, Opportunity, and the Transformative Power of a Safety Net.

Investing in Our People: Taxes, Opportunity, and the Transformative Power of a Safety Net.

During the 2024 federal budget release last week, the government announced it is imposing a capital gains tax, which was met with blowback from higher-earning Canadians. Some argued the change would affect earnings earmarked for retirement, while others argued it would affect their cottage or investment properties’ sales down the line.

The one commonality? Higher-income earners want to keep more of what they make.

However, not all of your tax dollars go to the things you can see such as roads and other infrastructure, healthcare, and education. Some of the taxes you pay now can change someone’s life for the better; this is the social safety net that Canadians have come to appreciate, particularly during a global pandemic.

Blackbird CEO Lisa Kirbie took to Twitter this week, speaking about her own lived experience and how that safety net got her through.

Tweet from Lisa Kirbie: "If you've never gone hungry or didn't know how rent was getting paid or you couldn't afford diapers, you have no idea how utterly exhausting and demoralizing it is to be poor. I was completely broken by the system. Everything was a struggle. I didn't know how to keep going."

Lisa explained that, while things like bank charges or small unexpected payments are not life-altering for most people, they were a “make or break” for her—and many other lower-income Canadians—at one point.

Tweet from Lisa Kirbie: "A minor setback like an NSF bank charge could take months to financially recover from. 
In the spring of '97, I broke down. I was sobbing sitting on the floor of my kitchen while trying to entertain my toddler. 
It was then that I realized that education was my only way out."

Benefits such as subsidized daycare and housing, along with the Child Tax Benefit (CTB), are among the reasons Lisa was able to “scrape by” while going to university to complete her undergraduate degree.

Tweet from Lisa Kirbie: "Fast forward a couple years. I was enrolled in a BA program. I had student loans, grants, SA in between semesters, food bank, subsidized daycare (no payment), subsidized housing (below market rent). And I had the Child Tax Benefit (now the CCB). We were just scraping by."
Tweet from Lisa Kirbie: "For prob close to a decade, my little family was subsidized by tax payers and I am forever grateful to have been given an opportunity to achieve beyond my wildest dreams. 
I've worked hard but without the system in place to help with a hand up I've no idea where I'd be now."

Paying taxes is no fun—for anyone—but living in a society with a social safety net, where we try to ensure equality of opportunity for all, is a good use of taxpayer dollars. As one Twitter user put it, sometimes you’re doing the “catching” with that net and sometimes you’re the one being caught.