I had CBC radio playing in the background on Monday and an item about property tax assessments in New Brunswick came on and the next thing I knew, I was listening to Kevin Lacey of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF).
I didn’t actually catch what he said but I can guess with some degree of certainty it was something along the lines of: “CUT TAXES!”
Lacey and the CTF are a notoriously one-note chorus, but boy are they ever given lots of opportunities to sing.
Represent?
Whenever a government enacts a tax or cuts a tax or spends money or doesn’t spend money, some reporter with a microphone will rush off to get the opinion of the CTF, which claims to speak on behalf of all Canadian taxpayers. I know they don’t because I’m a Canadian taxpayer and they don’t speak for me, even if I do occasionally agree with them. (They’re like a group that claims it’s always 6 o’clock: twice a day you have to admit they’re right, but it doesn’t make you think, “Man, these people have such amazing insight.”)
Hearing Lacey reminded me of a piece John Oliver did on Last Week Tonight about the National Rifle Association. That group, which has successfully blocked gun control laws in the United States for decades, has 5 million members. In a country of 330 million, that represents 1.5% of the population and yet they exert this outsized influence on something as serious as the regulation of firearms. Their secret, according to one commentator, is that they have one issue and pursuing it simply means saying “No,” over and over and over again.
Sound familiar?
Except the NRA actually has members who pay dues and attend annual general meetings and vote on things.
The CTF is a totally different bird.
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