So what should the provincial government do in its upcoming budget?

Well, here's a start - Click here

The link above takes you to the CTF's recommendations. It's a document we produce each year and provide to the Minister and opposition critics. The content and research that goes into the document usually makes its way into future columns that I write as well so it's a pretty useful exercise.

I won't bore you with all the details of the document, but if you take a quick look through it, you'll see it's heavy on the "control spending" side and light on the tax cut side.

The reason for that of course is due to the province currently swimming in debt. It needs to get the deficit under control first before making sizeable tax reductions. And it's not like it's that hard to do - last year's deficit represents just 4% of total spending. If the province can't find 4% to cut after years of increasing spending at more than double the rate of inflation and population growth, well they shouldn't be in power.

In the meant time, we did make two tax recommendations:

1) Don't raise or create new taxes
2) Stop secretly raising income taxes through bracket creep

If the latter sounds like a foreign concept, visit www.BracketCreep.ca for a short video on how most people are getting secretly taxed, but don't even know it.

Happy reading!