Smaller Government is Non-Negotiable

If there’s one thing that drives folks crazy, it’s politicians who say one thing but do another. This kind of hypocrisy is readily apparent, especially among conservatives, when it comes to promises of smaller government.

Generally speaking, most small-c conservatives believe that governments should be limited in size and scope. We believe the purpose of government is to protect individual rights and freedoms, and to provide security. We recognize the dangers inherent with invoking something as inscrutable as “the public good” to override individual choice, especially when deploying the state’s coercive powers. History has demonstrated that when governments begin to do so, they tend to start serving themselves rather than the people.

Unfortunately, the past 30 years has seen an undeniable expansion in the size and scope of government.

According to a recent study, Canadian federal and provincial government [debt](https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/canadians-bear-weight-of-growing-government-debt-burden#:~:text=According to a recent study,governments ran during the pandemic.) has nearly doubled from $1.1 trillion in 2007/08 to $2.1 trillion in 2022/23. As a direct result, taxpayers are on the hook for tens of billions in interest payments, while inflation has risen dramatically. Printing money has a real cost; every dime you have saved is now worth less, and every product you purchase now costs more.

The larger government gets, the more intrusive it becomes both in our economy and in our lives. From an economic perspective, complying with government red tape now costs businesses more than $40 billion every year. The effects of regulatory overkill can be seen everywhere from the housing market to your cell phone bill.

We now even have governments using regulation to summarily kill entire industries, like coal fired electricity generation, natural gas heating, and oil production for gasoline. Even more concerning is our governments’ increasing reliance on so-called “sin taxes” like Trudeau’s carbon tax.

Let’s be clear, there is nothing conservative about carbon taxes, whether it’s Trudeau’s consumer carbon tax or Danielle Smith’s industrial carbon tax. These are both big government central-planning schemes run amuck, which are driving up costs for everyone.

Not for a second do I buy that these taxes are needed to “put a price” on carbon. Every consumer product in Canada had a price well before these taxes were created.

The monetary incentive to use less has always existed. Dads everywhere were turning down the thermostat, and moms everywhere were shutting off the lights when kids left the room long before Justin Trudeau came along.

What these new carbon taxes do is add to the pain felt by you and your family for the “sins” of going to work, heating your home, and buying groceries. They unfairly punish rural families more than city dwellers. Worse yet, like all sin taxes, they are severely regressive. As Smith and Trudeau jack up their carbon tax rates from $65 per tonne today to $170 per tonne by 2030, seniors on fixed incomes will be the hardest hit.

With billions in revenue now being provided by carbon taxes, it will only be a matter of time for governments to begin proposing other new sin taxes, like sugar taxes or meat taxes. The folks who are currently pushing for these types of policies do not respect our right to make such decisions for ourselves. For them, it is the state’s duty to engage in ideologically driven behavioural engineering, designed to coerce you into living your life their way.

Unfortunately, when it comes to problems like public debt, burdensome red tape, unnecessary regulation, and sin taxes, conservative governments across Canada have been among the worst offenders. The abject failure to shrink the size and scope of government over the past 30 years is now being felt by every one of us.

For conservative politicians to shake the stench of hypocrisy on this file, the public is going to need to see real results. Smaller government can’t just mean smaller than the NDP. It needs to mean spending less, regulating less, taxing less, interfering in the economy less, and respecting folks to make the right choices for ourselves and our families.

Ultimately, smaller government is about freedom, and freedom is non-negotiable.