By Gerald
Provincial and Federal Governments tax workers without questioning or taking responsibility for where our taxes go. We know from several studies provided in the U.S. that the majority of disabled workers in Canada are not funded by provincial worker compensation boards. At the Federal level taxpayer dollars are collected and put into CPP where the Federal Government then provides disability pensions for work related disabilities. Even worse is that 50% of the taxes collected by the Federal Government are paid for by workers and provincial WCB systems claw back 100% of the disability pensions to reduce or eliminate paying earning loss supplements.
At the Provincial level tax payers are forced to pay for medical benefits for disabled workers through Alberta Health Care. Added to this tax payers are forced to provide social service benefits for disabled workers. There has to be accountability of our elected Governments to pay to have studies as to how many millions of dollars of tax payer’s hard earned dollars are going to subsidize employers Alberta employers to enable Alberta to have the lowest premiums in North America other than North Dakota which has lower premiums than Alberta and worse yet is when billions of dollars paid to WCB by workers is returned to employers in the form of dividends while tax payers pay the majority of the benefits to care for disabled workers.
The NDP Government must fund a study to determine just how much of tax payers hard earned dollars both Federally and Provincially are used to subsidize employers as an economic incentive to employers to stay in Alberta to take advantage of lower premiums or to entice employers from other provinces to relocate because of lower premium costs which in reality, this economic advantage is paid for by tax payers with the majority of tax payers being workers and their families.
