It's really the Canadian ethics' commissioner

Revenue Canada (or the Canada Revenue Agency, as it is now called) is the conscience of the country.  When I worked there -- by the way, it was a privilege -- we were the money police, the custodians of the public purse and the ethics' commissioners for all those Canadians who didn't get it...didn't get how a country runs. 

It runs on taxes. 

This hit me again the other night when I was having a dinner-table conversation with an economics' professor.  He actually said we didn't necessarily need taxes, that Canada could just operate on royalties.  Huh!!??!!  Not wishing to be rude, as we were sitting around my dining table, I didn't push it....well, OK, couldn't help myself, did push it a little...but how the h-ll would that work?  Would the royalties be on goods such as oil and trees?  And what about all the Canadians who don't buy oil and trees?  Why would they not have to pay their fair share to live in this magnificent country?

Well, this was all too complicated and convuluted an econometric theory for my pea brain to grasp, which is precisely the problem.  You have to keep it simple and everyone has to pay.  Period.  The end.  The phrase "bone-headed intellectual" formulated in my mind as I listened to him.  The lecture he delivered gratis many innocent university students pay good money for.  Sad.  But I digress. 

Jason Kenney has just introduced a new bill naming 27 new countries as "safe".  In other words countries from which, by definition, one cannot be a refugee.  That's because they are free democracies and thus cannot be persecuting people.  I mean, how can one be a refugee from Austria?!  That country is now on the list, along with Denmark, France, Sweden and a host of other peaceful nations.  The reason he has introduced the bill is because he is targeting specific cultural groups who claim bogus refugee status and then don't even bother to show up for their hearing.  They disappear into the kindly and naive Canadian woodwork.

I mention this because when Canada admits immigrants and refugees, it admits their cultural values.  Unfortunately, many of these cultural values clash with traditional Canadian tenets.......like paying your taxes. 

Thank G-d for Revenue Canada and the enforcement and diligence it applies.  As I have said before, never participate in the underground economy.  It simply isn't "Canadian".

p.s.  This is another for my buddies Elayne, Faye, Phil and the rest of the gang in the retired CRA group.