But how? I already give up over 40% of my modest family income to taxes.
I refuse to use Fordianisms like efficiencies. Instead the solution may be to get government out of some roles entirely, and then use that money to build more permanent affordable housing, including supporting housing for the mentally ill and addicted. But what government departments do we cut? Here's where the money goes, at the provincial level. What's in the Other Programs?
Merge Catholic and Public schools at a conservative savings of 2B per year
Better still, eliminate school boards all together, as New Brunswick has already done and Quebec is now doing.
Savings, at least another 500M per year.
A streamlined tax regime on a revenue-neutral basis, which treated all forms of income equally, deducted taxes from dividends and capital gains at source, and which eliminated 80% of all current deductions and loopholes for business and individuals would save at least 2B per year federally, and 500M provincially.
Moving to eliminate overt corporate welfare (I'm excluding culture here) would save not less than 10B Federally and not less than 1.5B provincially each year.
Streamlining social assistance by folding money from specialty programs into the general per person amount; and by merging the shelter allowance and the personal expenses amount and by eliminating asset limits and increasing income clawbacks substantially would be at least 500M
Merging OW and ODSP would save another 500M
What am I at? 5.5B per year in Ontario alone (provincial level). That's enough to (take your choice) fund pharmacare for every person in Ontario to the tune of 200 common drugs, without any federal contribution at all.
Or, you could increase social assistance payments to OW singles by $200 per month
If you then removed non-useful incarceration of non-convicted, non-dangerous persons; as well as non-violent convicts (replacing prison w/community service and/or fines) you'd be good for another 1B easy.
Then, we can talk about revenue from legalizing adult, consenting prostitution as well as a broader range of drugs/substances; minimum 2B per year (income tax, corporate tax, sales tax)
Then we can ditch property tax exemptions for religious institutions, that will drive well in excess of 1B in Ontario.
So, we can now afford both the pharmacare and the OW enhancement.
If we raise minimum wage to $17CAD per hour, province-wide (that's less than New York State's current number); we should spin off more than 2B in new revenue per year.
That should allow us to go to $300 more per OW recipient.
Now if corporate taxes for small businesses were put back to the same as the general corporate rate, with no further increase (which was the historical norm though the 1980s) we'd spin off another 2B easy.
Throw in a modest raise of 1% in corporate tax to well below historic highs in Ontario and we now have enough for $400 extra per OW recipient.
Should we raise the VAT/HST back to 15% its historic norm, a 2 point raise provincially, which is what Quebec and the maritime provinces have already done........
There's another 6B, or enough to balance the budget, reduce debt to GDP and still have some more pocket money for say low-income dental care not dependent on whether you're on OW/ODSP.
There ya go!