The big government advocacy group the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) has released its annual Alternative Federal Budget. The CCPA releases their alternative budget each spring to showcase what the group would do if they held the keys to government coffers. Now that’s a scary thought. As expected, it’s a loot bag of new government programs and pet projects coupled with massive tax increases.

Because the CCPA knows that selling a deficit fueled spending spree is politically untenable with the Canadian public, they are masking it in under the guise of a jobs creation plan. Thankfully, most Canadians are smarter than that. They know that borrowing money to pay highly priced federal bureaucrats in Ottawa is not the solution to kick-start our economy.

The added benefit for the CCPA is that all these new government programs give them an excuse to advocate for their dearest cause: raising taxes. In their plan, taxes will go up for everyone. Predictably, they are calling for a new tax bracket of 35 per cent for Canadians making over $250,000. They also want to see federal corporate tax rates go up from 15 to 21 per cent. Under their oddly named “Sectoral Development” plan, tax rates for mining and the oil and gas industry would go up to 28 per cent. The CCPA is also advocating for a regressive “sugar tax” on pop and energy drinks that would disproportionally affect lower income Canadians.

All told, they want the feds to grab an extra $36 billion in revenue compared with last year’s budget from working Canadians to pay for their orgy of new program spending and $114,000 a year bureaucrats. In recent years, the government has finally begun to hold the line on spending. Let’s hope they follow through on their promise to balance the budget by 2015 and ignore the failed ideas of the CCPA.

A complete list of the CCPA’s proposed tax increases and cost:

• Eliminate the Universal Child Tax Benefit – $2.7 billion

• Sugary drink tax - $150 million

• Eliminate the Textbook Tax Credit, Scholarship Tax Credit, Tuition Fee and Education Tax Credit, RESPs and the Canada Education Savings Grant - $1.5 billion

• A new Green Car Levy - $300 million

• New 28 per cent tax rate on oil and gas and mining industries - $1 billion

• Cap RRSP contributions at $20,000 a year - $232 million

• A new tax rate for income over $250,000 - $2.7 billion

• Eliminate other “loopholes” - $10 billion

• New tax on financial transactions - $4 billion

• Cancel pension income splitting - $1 billion

• Increase corporate tax rates to 21 per cent - $6 billion (by 2015-16)