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The Current Transcript for January 31, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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It's about freedom. It's about democracy. It's about human dignity. It's people power.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: She has been a leading and loud right of center opposition voice in Venezuelan politics for decades and in the standoff between Nicolas Maduro and Juan Guaido, each of them claims the presidency of Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado has handed her political hat to Juan Guaido. As the Venezuelan military continues to consider its options and the millions who have fled wonder if they can return, we want to know how this prominent political opponent sees a way forward. Maria Corina Machado my Charlo joins me in just a moment. Also today:.

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People are yelling, she's a socialist, she wants 70 percent marginal tax rates. Under public demonstration, Dwight Eisenhower, we had 90 percent marginal tax rates.

AMT: Newly elected to the U.S. Congress, Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is changing the conversation on tax rates in her own country. Now a Dutch economic historian, Rutger Bregman, has shocked the multimillionaires a Davos with a parallel message: Ditch the philanthropy and start paying more taxes at much higher rates. We'll hear from him in an hour. When you think of food that defines Canada you need to look no further than the menu at the Chinese restaurant you can find on most every main street in most every small town.

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So in Thunder Bay if you're a Chinese restaurant you have to have BonBon Ribs. In the prairies, every single Chinese restaurant has Ginger Beef.

AMT: Those offerings are as quintessentially Canadian as a Timbit, but don't take my word for it. Listen in half an hour, as Ann Hui takes us on a road trip through Canada as she calls Chop Suey nation. I'm in Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The current.

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Venezuela needs support of democratic countries to fight 'criminal state,' says political opponent of Maduro

Guests: Maria Corina Machado, Ben Rowswell

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[Demonstrators cheering for Guaido]

AMT: The sun was strong and the clouds were dark over Caracas yesterday, as thousands of people marched in support of Juan Guaido. The chant means 'Guaido, friend, the people are with you'. It was a show of support in the streets of the Venezuelan capital. Juan Guaido, the leader of the Voluntad Popular or Popular Will Party has been recognized as interim Venezuelan president by the U.S. Canada and the Lima group which is comprised of over a dozen Latin American countries and the Caribbean. But Nicolas Maduro continues to hang on to power with the support of the military and Russia. And he has denounced Mr. Guaido's movement as an attempted U.S. led coup.

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[Spanish speech]

AMT: Maria Corina Machado was a long-time opponent of Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez. She is a former member of Venezuela's national assembly and the leader of the Vente Venezuela party which is described as a center liberal party. She was one of the leading figures in the protest that shook Venezuela in 2014 and she joins me from Caracas. Hello.

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Hello.

AMT: You and Juan Guaido are not even members of the same political party. Why are you supporting him as the interim president of Venezuela?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Maria: Well, because that's exactly what our constitution states. And because right now, above any ideological difference, we're fighting for the survival of our nation against a criminal state that has, not only violated our laws and constitutions, but brought hunger and violence intentionally to our country in order to make good businesses out of our resources and and stay in power indefinitely.

AMT: And the Venezuelan Attorney General under Mr. Maduro has launched a criminal investigation into minister Guaido, frozen his accounts, and banned him from traveling. What do you make of that reaction?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Well [unintelligible] because we all know the true and legitimate prosecutor has been thrown out of the country, as well as Justices of the Supreme Court. These are [unintelligible] that are part of the criminal regime of Nicolas Maduro.

AMT: Now you and other opponents of Nicolas Maduro say your struggle is about democracy. There are critics who challenge you on this and say it is anything but. And I want you to hear a clip. Last week we spoke to George Ciccariello-Maher . He is the author of several books on Venezuela including We Created Chavez the People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution. Listen to what he has to say.

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You've seen leaders across the western hemisphere of right wing governments in particular in Latin America people like Jair Bolsanaro a quasi-fascist who was elected in Brazil stepping out at the head and saying that they recognize this as the legitimate constitutional process and it's far from that. And of course you have Mike Pence, you have Donald Trump you have the US government that has been meeting actively with Venezuelan opposition elements to foment a coup and stepping in to throw their weight behind it

AMT: Maria Corina Machado what do you say to those who were accusing you and your political allies of trying to foment a U.S. led coup?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Another tell me something, Anna Maria. Even though these which is backed by the communist regime of Cuba, long time ago it stopped being an ideological issue. This is a regime that has links to guerillas from Colombia with drug cartels of the whole region. So he's a criminal regime. And that's why we finally have come together as a society. More than 90 percent of the population are desperate demanding for Maduro to step aside. We do not want violence. We want to stop violence. And our constitution is absolutely clear in which are steps to take. Juan Guaido is the legitimate president of Venezuela and I would like to make a recommendation to the government of Canada and its foreign minister for the leadership exercise in the region and actually being the leaders in supporting a democratic transition in Venezuela.

AMT: You're talking of course about a Lima group that Canada helped found.

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Absolutely. 14 countries are going to meet in Canada next Monday. And I believe that resolution of the Lima groups that happen [unintelligible] in their meeting in Lima, Peru, was that tipping point that finally make the international community understand that time was over. And even though oppression has been horrible in the last day, I'm sure you are aware that 11 journalists from different countries have been detained in the last days. So we are seeing a desperate regime and that don't understand that even with the armed forces, he has lost authority and leadership.

AMT: Well I want to ask you about the armed forces because the armed forces have at the higher level publicly declared allegiance with Mr. Maduro. But they have not taken what papers are calling a muscular role than they might have in the past. We are hearing reports of security forces that are actually going after certain people who had been protesters. What do you make of what the military is doing right now? What are you watching for there?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: What’s going on with the armed forces is a huge breakdowns between the top ranks that is certainly committed with crimes and drug trafficking in all kinds of criminal activities, and the lower ranks. That's awful because those soldiers and officers they go back to their home they find their wives and mothers and sisters and children waiting for them with no food no medicine. And they know, armed forces, what the regime has done in terms of their ties with criminals which run abroad. The ELN, the Colombian guerilla, has taken over 50 percent of Venezuelan territory.

AMT: Given that division within the armed forces, how worried are you about some kind of civil war or some kind of violence breaking through the military?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: I certainly believe Venezuela's military, at the moment of a tipping point, a breaking point, they will support the constitution, democracy and our people. We have to be very careful with these kinds of threats and alarms because it has been used for many years - by Chavez first and then Maduro - to stop any possibility of change with this idea that violence might come. Believe me, Venezuelan people, we are not divided either by religious issues, either ideological or social issues. Right now Venezuela is a society that is at the risk of hunger and there are huge and deep and profound grievances. And that has us to be more together than ever in our desire to have these profound regime change that goes beyond Maduro leaving power, it goes beyond. We have to teach this system of corruption and mafia and crime, and have Venezuela be brought back again to the block Western democracies and with open market and trying to get integration. So I think that idea of a civil war it's being used to stop this process that the Venezuelan people mostly, mostly support. We support Juan Guaido and we need to protect him certainly. And we need to move ahead as fast as possible, a new democratic fair and transparent election that will finally bring peace and stability to Venezuela.

AMT: Given that that quest for democracy that you talk about, how comfortable are you with support from Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: As I said before this is not an ideological issue. We need every single democracy in the world to support us. Brazil is a a huge player in the region and has certainly many problems shared with Venezuela, as Colombia. I would say as the Caribbean Islands. So, these I said, you know, and I repeat once and again, goes beyond any ideological position.

AMT: The Trump administration has frozen surveillance funds in the US for the Maduro administration and is making them available to Mr. Guaido's team. It is also denying redirecting money that the US pays Venezuela for oil, redirecting that to Mr. Guaido's team. What difference will that make?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: A huge difference. First of all we have to understand that money the regime receives, is money from all Venezuelans money [unintelligible] as public enterprise, goes either to corruption or repression. And that has to be stopped. As with any criminal organization, and that's what Maduro has right now, you have to stop its sources of funding. Once you do that, it starts breaking down. And that's exactly what must be done. And we expect other countries, Canada and Europe, to move ahead in locking any illegal sources the regime is still getting from gold and from other businesses.

AMT: You make the point that so many people have fled Venezuela. When do you see Venezuelans coming home?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Very soon after Maduro and the regime leave. Believe me, Anna Maria, we have a strong and active diaspora that are longing to come back. Venezuelan reconstruction and rebuilding will be a huge challenge, because our institutions, our economy, our infrastructure is in pieces. But we have an educated and talented population and we certainly have the talent and the energy to move ahead.

AMT: I have to ask you, in 2002 there was what is essentially a botched, a coup attempt against Hugo Chavez. You were part of the group that tried to change things then. What's the difference between now and then?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Do you know that's what the regime try to portray. I was part of a huge mass mobilization that was attacked. And actually a young guy near to me died that day in the shooting. Then they had to portray it as a coup d’état, when actually the military reacted to as a consequence of concept of what we people in the street did. Imagine how many lives we could have saved in the last 20 years, over 30 hundred, thousands of Venezuelans have been violently killed. So it's a tragedy. It's worse than a war. It is something that we need to learn from it for the future. Never again military individuals that come and portry themselves as [unintelligible] and deny the independence of powers, the freedom of the press. We know that the existence of political parties with different views will learn a lot and I believe the biggest legacy will be to our children. These will have been the last [unintelligible] in Venezuelan history.

AMT: How closely are you working with Mr. Guaido?

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Very much. Very much. These are the moments which we have to put all our energy, our dreams, our ideas because it has to be in saving Venezuela, and bringing our country back to our democratic system. Juan Guaido is our president and we we'll support him and protect him and move ahead into a transition that, as I said before, will bring us the possibility to have free and fair election as soon as possible and have Venezuela start its rebuilding very soon.

AMT: Maria Corina Machado thank you for your time.

MARIA CORINA MACHADO: Thank you very much.

AMT: Maria Corina Machado is the leader of the Vente Venezuela party. She is supporting Juan Guaido as interim president of Venezuela. And we reached her in Caracas. Canada of course is among the countries including the U.S. that have recognized Juan Guaido as Venezuela's interim leader. Ben Rowswell was Canada's ambassador to Venezuela from 2014 to 2017. He is currently the president of the Foreign Relations think tank the Canadian International Council and he joins us from Toronto.

BEN ROWSWELL: Hello Anna Maria.

AMT: Has Canada gone too far in supporting an unelected leader in Venezuela?

BEN ROWSWELL: No I don't think so you know Canadians are struggling with this issue though, and that's because we Canadians have this innate sense of the primacy of sovereignty. We understand how important it is to be able to take our own decisions, free from the interference of others and possibly the United States, in both cases. But I think we're united around consensus that the question of who governs Venezuela must be up to Venezuelans. Now in his case it's not Donald Trump was standing in the way of that. It's Nicolas Maduro. This is a leader who canceled a recall referendum that was required by the Constitution in 2016. He suspended the constitution in 2017. He packed the electoral commission with his friends and subordinates. He jailed other candidates. He committed electoral fraud in 2018. The person that's preventing Venezuelans advance from choosing who their government is Nicolas Maduro and that's why Canada is taking a stand.

AMT: How active was our foreign minister Chrystia Freeland and the creation of the Lima Group a group of Latin American countries and the Caribbean, minus Mexico, that are supporting this new interim president?

BEN ROWSWELL: Minister Freeland has been very active and in many ways the Lima Group is archetypal Canadian diplomacy. This is the way that kind of promotes democracy in the world. We start listening to the voices of the people from the country. There's been a process for a year and a half, ever since that constitution was suspended where the elected representatives of the Venezuelan National Assembly have been calling on countries like Canada and Latin America to help others and Latin America to do so. And then we're doing it multilaterally. We've worked with the countries that represent the vast majority of the citizens of Latin America in order to figure out how to respond to this call from Venezuelans in a way that respects in our polls are democratic great, and also that does it within a regional context. So it's not just one country, well more of Latin America that's telling people what to do. It's the entire region, the entire neighborhood of Venezuela that's coming together in a united way to say it's time for Venezuelans to regain their popular sovereignty.

AMT: And even in the Guardian today out of the U.K., apparently the EU countries are prepared to recognize Mr. Guaido as a legitimate interim president, if Mr. Maduro refuses to call fresh elections by Sunday. There's been I guess there were more phone calls between Mr. Guaido and the U.K. foreign secretary. The idea that that support spreads to the E.U., how significant is that?

BEN ROWSWELL: Well you know the European Union also wants to restore sovereignty to the people of Venezuela. So they're essentially aligning exactly the same position that Latin American countries and Canada took to the Lima Group. Everyone agrees that the Venezuelan people deserve an election, that the only way to resolve this impact is for there to be an election by which Venezuelans decide who their president should be once and for all. There are many ways to do that. They could reschedule a recall referendum that Chavez himself agreed to have the people of Venezuela judge his presidency in one of these referendums in 2004. Maduro refused to do it in 2016, perhaps that might be the solution now. Or they could just go ahead with elections for the full term of the presidency something that was not allowed in 2018. So I think the European Union is coming out on exactly the same side as Canada because ultimately we're all democracies and we all believe that the individual citizens of Venezuela are the ones that should be able to choose who their government is.

AMT: I am wondering what you think of the U.S. decision. They buy half a million barrels of Venezuelan oil a day. They have now said that they're holding that money back from the Maduro administration and making it available solely to those working with Mr. Guaido. And there is a sanctions on other U.S. oil going to Venezuela that's used in the production of its own crude. What do you make of that?

BEN ROWSWELL: So this is a long time for carers to be standing up for democracy because the president's State is not. The approach that Canada has been taking has been very much to support the citizens of Venezuela. We have not introduced economic sanctions for example that punish the entire economy. Our sanctions have been directed against individuals inside the on governments that commit abuses. When you are the principal source of income to the country, that's ultimately going to hurt individual Venezuelan people, and that's why I believe that the sanctions against the oil company introduced by the United States are not actually helping the Venezuelans in their struggle to regain popular sovereignty. It's really quite different from the way that Canada is approaching this problem.

AMT: Okay Ben Rowswell we have to leave it there but thank you for your insights today.

BEN ROWSWELL: You're welcome.

AMT: Ben Rosewell president of the Canadian International Council. He was Canada's ambassador to Venezuela from 2014 to 2017. He's in Toronto. Stay with us the CBC News is next. And then we're talking about food from Ginger Beef to Chop Suey. Writer Ann Hui gives Chinese Canadian food it's due as our national cuisine. And as she does that she learned something about her family and herself as part of a journey across this country and in two smart Chinese Canadian restaurants across the country. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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These dishes from Chinese restaurants are uniquely Canadian. Is your favourite on the list?

Guests: Ann Hui.

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come from Davos to Washington and beyond the idea of raising the tax rates of the super-rich into the 70 percent range is gaining momentum as a way to rein in inequality in half an hour. We'll hear from someone who's just returned from Davos where he was preaching the ideas of the planet's richest people. But first Chop Suey from coast, to coast, to coast.

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AMT: Visit, really, any Canadian town and you’re likely to find a post office, a doughnut shop, and a Chinese Canadian restaurant. Sometimes you’ll find that Canadian staple in an unlikely locale.

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[Noise

AMT: Well those are curlers and they're hitting the ice at the Port Arthur Curling Club in Thunder Bay, Ontario. And for 46 years now many of them have hit the buffet after the game. Ling Lee's Chinese cuisine is located right up the stairs from that rink. And if you there you have to try the Bon Bon Ribs a specialty ubiquitous in Thunder Bay Chinese restaurants. They've been a hit on the menu at Ling Lees since owner Norina Karschti's father started the restaurant. The CBC's Amy Hadley spoke to her and to some of her loyal customers like.

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NORINA: The Bon Bons. They were chopped. They were marinated overnight with seasonings like salt, sugar, Chinese allspice and then their corded in egg and then the breading. The flavour is a little bit salty, so it goes pretty well with beer. So which goes really well with curlers. But it's a stable. It's like you have your rolls, your fried rice, your chicken balls and Bonbon's. Those who like the staples of Thunder Bay, Thunder Bay cuisine. So this is done. And we'll lift this off and we're going to drain this off. So it's gone from a nice golden brown that it was to a little bit darker. Some people call them sizzling Bon Bons because they're sizzling when they go on the plate, so they're pretty hot. So they're going to go on there like that. And then you're going to grab some lemon to garnish it. And you're good to go.

CUSTOMERS: We've been coming here for 20, 25 years at least if not more. And we always look for the Bon Bons. Bon Bons and egg rolls, that's our favourite, especially my wife, she loves the Bon Bons. I pity Canada that doesn't have these.

WIFE: They're crispy as heck, really good.

HUSBAND: Very delicious, very delicious.

WIFE: Mm hmm.

AMT: Well 2000 kilometres to the West at Bings Number One Restaurant in Stony Plain, Alberta, William Choy and his father Fon cook an Alberta Chinese specialty invented in Calgary: Ginger Beef.

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WILLIAM: Shake up, this is a ginger beef sauce that my mom makes. There's ginger sauce, sugar, vinegar.

[William and Fon speaking Chinese]

WILLIAM: I'm going to move it around so it just coats all the ginger beef. And from there then we're ready to plate.

MADELEINE: Wow, so that looks great.

WILLIAM: It does - want to try some?

AMT: Yes. Is your mouth watering yet? Or do you prefer dishes such as shredded jelly fish to Chop Suey and egg rolls? Chinese Canadian restaurants often offer up dishes that you would never actually find inside China. And that has led some to label them as inauthentic or even fake Chinese food, but not Global Mail journalist Ann Hui. She is the author of a new book Chop Suey Nation the: Legion Café and Other Stories from Canada's Chinese Restaurant. She wrote about a road trip she took with her husband, sampling Chinese Canadian cuisine right across the country, and what she discovered about her own family history along the way. Ann Hui joins me in Toronto. Hello.

ANN HUI: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: Had you ever heard of Bon Bon's and Ginger Beef before you visit an Ling Lee's and Bing's.

ANN HUI: No. I grew up in Vancouver and I live in Toronto. So these are both dishes that I'd never heard of before but when I visited this restaurant I quickly learned that these were dishes that were ubiquitous in their region. So when Thunder Bay if you're a Chinese restaurant you have to have Bon Bon ribs. In the prairies, every single Chinese restaurant has Ginger Beef.

AMT: They are ubiquitously Canadians and a lot of us never knew that. I didn't. Who knew.

ANN HUI: Right. Not just ubiquitously Canadian but ubiquitous within those specific regions but often only in those regions. What other Chinese Canadian specialties did you find on your trip. There's Fried Macaroni in Quebec which was also a new one for me. And my favorite the Chow Mein in Newfoundland which is nothing like the Chow Mein in that you would find here in Toronto or almost anywhere else in Canada. In Newfoundland because they are an island, it took them even longer than the rest of the country to have access to authentic Chinese ingredients. So even egg noodles, which is the basis of chow mein, I mean I mean literally means fried noodles. And so to substitute for that the early Chinese cooks in Newfoundland would actually slice cabbage very thinly so that it resembled somewhat noodles. So if you order a chow mein in Newfoundland even today it's still made of cabbage.

AMT: Why do you call the food these restaurants serve Chop Suey cuisine?

ANN HUI: It is a way of describing this entire repertoire of food and dishes that are sold all over Canada, and really North America and around the world as Chinese, even though these dishes don't necessarily originate from China. So dishes like Chop Suey dishes like sweet and sour chicken balls you would have a very hard time finding these in China.

AMT: Growing up in Vancouver with parents who emigrated from China, when did you first try this kind of Chop Suey cuisine?

ANN HUI: When I was probably five or six. This was a meal in my school cafeteria an elementary school and it was our Chinese New Year Lunch. I remember in elementary school there's like hamburger day, and there's taco day and pizza day. So this happened to be timed around Chinese New Year and they brought in a Chinese lunch. And I just remember looking down at this plate and it was covered with all of these foods that I didn't recognize. And yet my school was telling me that this was Chinese food. And I was just so mystified by this. It was exotic to me.

AMT: What did your family think of Chop Suey cuisine?

ANN HUI: It's funny because it's very common. I think within Chinese communities and even outside Chinese companies now to really denigrate this kind of food. And so within my family and with most of the Chinese families that I knew, it was very much dismissed as kind of fake Chinese, especially in a city like think of all this we have access to such amazing Chinese food. They just didn't understand why anybody would want to eat this kind of fake stuff. But when I traveled across this country and the more that I learned about this cuisine, its history, how it developed, why it developed, it really led me to appreciate it in a way that I had never known to before. I mean this is a cuisine that was developed by for the first Chinese - mostly men - who arrived in North America. They were all left with few options in terms of making a living because they were explicit laws and policies in place at the time that actually barred most Chinese men from entering most professional occupations. So that left them with just a few options; Laundromats, convenience stores and restaurants. So you had all of these Chinese men who suddenly wound up working in restaurants because this was the only way they had to make a living. They weren't trained cooks. They didn't have access to Chinese ingredients like they would in China. And so they just made this cuisine up. They made up these dishes that were kind of Chinese that they thought would appeal to Western pallets. It's entirely improvised.

AMT: So the first time you had it at school - just take me back there for a minute. When you first tried that food, what did you think?

ANN HUI: I thought it was delicious. I still do. I mean every once in a while my husband is not Chinese. So he grew up with this kind of Chop Suey cuisine. Every once in a while will still eat it. And I don't think there is anything wrong with that. I mean a lot of these dishes they hit that perfect sweet spot between what little sweet, salty, they're sour.

AMT: Well let's go back to Bing's Number One Restaurant. William Choy is also the mayor of Stony Plain Alberta and the CBC is Madeleine Cummings visited him while he was chatting with a group of regular customers, customers he calls the coffee senators.

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CUSTOMER: Morning William.

WILLIAM: Morning.

CUSTOMER: Six days a week we're here. We solve the world's problems. We're bugging the mayor to put an overpass in so that we don't have to sit at the tracks for about half an hour as it goes by.

WILLIAM: So just because Romeo's old, it's actually 3 minutes, he thinks it's half an hour because he forgets time.

CUSTOMER 2: I've been coming here most of my life. We had our wedding here with William's grandfather. $2.25 a plate. [Laughs] And a feast that you wouldn't believe

WILLIAM: I knew that this community has supported our family lots and it was about time to give back so that's why I ran.

MADELEINE: So do you guys all vote for him?

CUSTOMER: Yes, we vote for William, he's our man.

AMT: So he's really a fixture there.

ANN HUI: Very much.

AMT: What role did Chinese restaurants you visited play in their communities?

ANN HUI: Well as you just heard in a place like Stony Plain, I mean a restaurant like Bing's Number One basically operates as like a community living room. Some of these towns that I went to are less than you know two, three, four thousand people. Often they are the only restaurant. And throughout our history I learnt that these restaurants have often served a variety of purposes. They were often kind of child care centers operating out of these restaurants. Sometimes the owners of these restaurants were almost providing like banking services. There is even one restaurant in Newfoundland that I heard about that when the local court house had to shut down for renovations for a while, the restaurant ended up being used as the local courthouse.

AMT: Well let's talk a little bit more about Newfoundland because you visited Kwang Tung Restaurant on Fogo Island and you met the owner of Feng Zhu Huang. What was life like for her?

ANN HUI: Mrs. Huang story captivated me. I'd seen this photo of this woman outside of this restaurant on Fogo Island and you know I didn't know a lot about Fogo Island, but what I did know is that it is terribly isolated. I mean it is just literally an island off of an island. And so the idea that this Chinese woman would be living in this tiny town, I mean that raid away sparked my imagination, but then in the caption information it also said that she ran this restaurant 365 days a year by herself. And so I knew I needed to meet this woman because I just couldn't understand how somebody would make that choice. But when I met her and I learned her story I learned of how it was that she came to live there - essentially you know her entire family had moved to Newfoundland from China. They ended up running a restaurant on the mainland of Newfoundland. And then this opportunity to run a restaurant in Fogo Island came up and so the family split up. The husband stayed in Newfoundland and she and her three children moved to Fogo Island, because they figured two restaurants would mean two incomes, better life for all of them. Over time the children have grown older and they've gone to university and now are working in professional jobs elsewhere in the country. So she's been left on Fogo Island to run this restaurant on her own. When you hear the facts in and see all of those details just kind of laid out in black and white, it sounds like she would have this very lonely life and almost sad story. But when I talked to her I was struck by how much the opposite she seemed to be. She was full of joy. She is somebody who was always laughing. But above all she's proud. You know when she talked about the lives that she and her husband have managed to provide for her kids, she's just filled with this immense joy.

AMT: I mean she's emblematic to of- She and her husband have couples who will sacrifice so much for the children to really bring them a new life because that's why they came here. But I was really struck you really cared about her. You found out it was her birthday.

ANN HUI: Yes I found out it was her birthday that day that we went to visit her. I wanted to buy her a cake but I couldn't find a cake, because it is Fogo Island. And I bought her some chocolates. When I gave them to her, again, this was like such a small gesture but she was so delighted. And that struck me too. But you're right. I mean her experience and her story is as you say emblematic. It just illustrates perfectly the stories all across the country. Because what we heard from these families and from mostly these parents who had sacrificed so much by leaving their lives behind in China to come to this new country. Where they don’t speak the language. Don't know how to do so many things. Almost of them told me that they did it because of their children.

AMT: And you know you make the point that historically owning a restaurant was a common way for people coming new to the country to make a living in Canada when there were so many racist restrictions on what they could do. Why is it so prevalent today when those legal restrictions on employment don't exist, and when the Chinese economy is actually booming?

ANN HUI: You're right. A lot of those original restrictions that landed some of these original Chinese restaurant owners in restaurants, they don't exist anymore. But those other barriers, you know the ability to speak English for example or French, education, and whether or not you know credentials are transferable. There are still a lot of barriers that make it difficult for newcomers regardless of where they come from to do many other things. And so restaurants are often kind of a natural starting point for a lot of newcomers even today.

AMT: Well we heard about Norina Karschti earlier the owner of Ling Lee's Chinese cuisine of Thunder Bay. She told the CBC Amy Hadley about how she came to take over the restaurant from her father. Let's listen to her.

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AMY HADLEY: Where you always find to take over? Was that what you wanted to do?

NORINA KARSCHTI: Absolutely not [laughs]. I went to school, l went to college, because with my parents, it was always a big thing, 'make sure you further your education'. I worked for the government actually for 17 years. In '97 my dad approached me, so I came on board and sort of the rest is history. I am proud of what I’ve done with the business and that it is still continuing on and still successful today. I have to kids and both of them have absolutely no interest in the business. I think both of them have seen what's happened with me, the stresses and the sacrifices that I made. They don't want to do that. No. It's basically like 21 years of no family time.

AMT: What did you hear from other restaurant owners about their dreams for their children?

ANN HUI: I shouldn't speak for every single restaurant owner but what I heard from many of them was that they absolutely definitely did not want their children to enter the restaurant business. You know it had nothing to do with status or prestige or anything like that. It's simply that they having lived it, knew how much work. These restaurants were-- a lot of these owners were starting their days at 8:00 in the morning and then working until 9-10, maybe sometimes later at night. They didn't want that for their children. Many of these owners were running these businesses as launching pads in hopes of you know being able to pay for a college or university educations for their kids, so their kids wouldn't have to have these same lives.

AMT: And how did the children of the honors feel about growing up in their parents?

ANN HUI: I heard a variety of different experiences. I mean Norina was an interesting example because even though she didn't necessarily spend a lot of time in her dad's restaurant when she was growing up, she talked about resenting the fact that her parents had this restaurant because they spent so much time there. And so she didn't get to see that. I spoke with another young woman Ganing Tang who actually grew up inside of the restaurant. The family's home was in the basement of the restaurant. And so she sometimes felt, growing up, that she wanted to just live in a house like all of her classmates, instead of having her dining room at home be the restaurant's dining room. She wanted a life to look more like her classmates. But the flipside of that is that she got to spend a lot of time with her parents because when she was downstairs working on her homework if she had a question or she just wanted to chat with her parents all she had to do was go upstairs and say hi.

AMT: In this whole process, of course we learn about you, and you learn about you and your family. How did you find out about your own family's connection to Chinese Canadian restaurants?

ANN HUI: So it was only after this trip that I learned that my own parents had run this restaurant. I was visiting Vancouver a few months after the original Globe and Mail story had been published. And I got around asking my dad about his restaurants. Because you know my dad in the time that I was growing up had run restaurants, but they had been as far as I knew always kind of western restaurants. So he would make you know lasagnas and roast beef and chicken a la king, the classic 80s and 90s banquet food. So I was asking him about some of the restaurants that he had run before I was born, including one called the Legion Cafe which was in [unintelligible] BC, about an hour outside of Vancouver. And I mean when he finally realized that it wasn't going away and that he had answered my questions and finally given me the menu of this restaurant. And all over it was Chop Suey, sweet and sour pork, all over these classic Chop Suey dishes. And I was just completely gobsmacked because, as I said before, my parents had actually denigrated this kind of food growing up. And suddenly I was learning that they had run one of these restaurants and I that didn't know that. And that just brought me down this realization that you know I knew so little about my own family. I had thought to ask these questions of all these other Chinese restaurant owners and these other families all over the country. And yet I hadn't thought to ask these questions of my own parents.

AMT: And they said: "Oh we thought we told you". [Laughs]

ANN HUI: Something like that. I'm still not entirely sure what happened. I think that they either thought that I already knew or maybe they just didn't think their story was all that special. And that latter point I that was really interesting because it fit in with my experiences, with so many of these other restaurant owners all over Canada. When I would go in and I would ask them to hear their stories, I would ask what brought you here. Tell me about your restaurant. They were all just kind of stunned that I was asking, that I would be interested in hearing these stories.

AMT: Your father had been diagnosed with cancer at the time you were working on this project.

ANN HUI: Yes he was diagnosed in 2015. Even if it was just subconsciously, I am sure that part of the reason why I was asking all of these questions was just because I realized that we had a limited amount of time left together. And I wanted to learn more about his story. I wanted to know the life that he had had before he was just Dad. And it just turned out that this book gave me the perfect vehicle to be able to do that.

AMT: He died before it was published. What do you think it would have meant to him to see that book?

ANN HUI: So for the course of about a year you know I was flying back and forth between Toronto and Vancouver and having these interviews with him. And he was I think very proud of the fact that his story was going to be shared. He was proud I think of the fact that I was interested, even just as his daughter. And I think he would be extremely proud to see this book and to be able to read it.

AMT: There's something quite beautiful about the fact that you went across the country to discover this and then went back to family and discovered even more.

ANN HUI: It gave me the opportunity and kind of an excuse to sit down with my dad and to be able to kind of put on my journalist hat and asking these questions that I otherwise probably wouldn't have been able to, or would have felt too uncomfortable to. I was asking him questions as an interviewer and he was kind of the interviewee. And it was harder for him you know to dismiss me and to kind of walk away because he knew that this was important. So I am just so grateful that I got to do this, that I got to spend this time with him, and that I got to learn the story.

AMT: At the end of your journey, what do you want Canadians to see about the restaurants you visited and the dishes like the Ginger Beef and the Bon Bon Ribs?

ANN HUI: I hope that people come to realize what I came to realize, which is beyond just being delicious and the staple food that so many of us kind of enjoy every once in a while. These dishes have such an incredible history, and that they tell such an amazing story, the story of perseverance and endurance and sacrifice and entrepreneurialism. That I think is common in not only with the Chinese families who are involved in these restaurants, but really all immigrants. It's such a Chinese story but it's such a Canadian story. And I think regardless of what ethnicity or background people come from they're going to be able to relate. At the end of the day it's a book about families and it's a book about Canada. These stories just tell such an essential part of our history of who we are as a country where we come from.

AMT: And it's interesting because now as you pointed out there are lots of places where Canadians, especially in some of the big Canadian cities, where you can get quote unquote "authentic" Chinese food, but Chop Suey cuisine exists right along with it. Like they can both exist.

ANN HUI: Absolutely none of these things need to happen [unintelligible] because they're all great and they're all delicious and they all tell interesting stories. I think this obsession with up authenticity is a little bit misguided. You know cuisines adapt and they evolve as people move and share and eat other foods that they love their dishes are going to change. None of these things happen in a vacuum and this cuisine I think tells that story so beautifully.

AMT: What's your favorite dish after this trip?

ANN HUI: I mean my sandwich is still probably just Cantonese chow mien that ended up becoming my de facto order at just about every restaurant. It was always spring rolls and egg rolls. I would order but because I can never keep straight which is the one that I like and it is too embarrasing to have to ask over again which is which. So I would always order the two and then I would order Cantonese chow mein just because it's something enjoy. It's something I grew up with. It's something that's available in all these Chop Suey restaurants and they're delicious.

AMT: And we've learned that we are not solely a Timbit nation. We are a Chop Suey nation here in Canada.

ANN HUI: I think so.

AMT: Thanks for your work.

ANN HUI: Thank you Anna Maria.

AMT: Ann Hui is a Globe and Mail journalist. She's the author of Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada's Chinese Restaurants. We want to hear your thoughts on Chinese Canadian cuisine. Do you crave sweet and sour chicken balls in bright orange sauce? Are you a stickler for so-called authenticity in Chinese cuisine? Is there a specialty in your part of the country other Canadians need to know about? Send us your thoughts. Send us pictures of your favorite dish. We're on Twitter @TheCurrentCBC. You can comment on our Facebook page or go to our website cbc.ca/thecurrent and click on the Contact link. While you're on our Web site, by the way, we're running a survey. We're changing our podcast for The Current and we want your opinion. So please go there and check out that survey and give us some ideas. Let us know what you think of our ideas. And stay with us. Coming up what used to be a promise to raise taxes was career suicide for a politician. Politicians such as Democratic New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are changing that conversation. And it is spreading. We're going to talk about that when we return. I Anna Maria Tremonti. This as The Current.

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Raising taxes for the ultra-rich can save capitalism, argues author

Guests: Rutger Bregman, Lars Osberg, Joe Oliver

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

TV HOST: Now, Congresswomen, for you and some other freshmen members of Congress you're getting a fair amount of pushback are privately and publicly from more established members of - even their own party - saying 'wait your turn' you know 'go slow', 'don't don't don't ask for so much', 'don't make waves'.

[Objecting noises]

TV HOST: I want to ask this question in a respectful manner. On a scale of zero to some. How many [beep] do you give?

[Laughter]

CONGRESSWOMAN: I think it's zero.

[Laughter and cheers]

AMT: Newly elected U.S. Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on television with Stephen Colbert last week. She is making waves. One of the better known policy proposals is a pitch to increase income taxes on the richest Americans. She is calling for people who earn more than 10 million dollars a year to pay 70 percent in income tax on every dollar they earn above that 10 million dollars threshold. Inside the U.S. that's being treated by some as a radical idea, but it comes as a new Oxfam report points out that 26 of the world's richest billionaires currently hold the same wealth as three point eight billion of the world's poorest people. Even at Davos, Switzerland, where the global elite gathered last week for the annual World Economic Forum, raising higher taxes on the wealthy became a trending topic. Rutger Bregman was one of the speakers at Davos to address that last week. He's an author and an historian who's written about universal basic income and other progressive policies to fight inequality. Rutger Bregman is in Amsterdam. Hello.

RUTGER BREGMAN: Good morning.

AMT: What brought you to Davos in the first place?

RUTGER BREGMAN: Well you know I was invited to talk about my book, Utopia for a Realist which is about basic income, eradicating poverty and those kind of ideas. But then during a conference I got this uncomfortable feeling like am I really going to promote my book Friday morning during that panel, when no one raises the real issue that we should talk about which is tax avoidance and the rich just not paying their fair share.

AMT: Well tell me more about what you told them.

RUTGER BREGMAN: Well you can imagine when you're at a conference like this, there are all sorts of subjects being race like education and government transparency and feminism and climate change. So at first sight, it feels like a very progressive conference. But then you look for a little longer and then you notice that certain subjects are just forbidden. No one raises them. And if you try to, then the response is quite aggressive. So I was at a panel that was behind closed doors, you know, not accessible for journalists, and I try to raise the issue of tax avoidance. And again you know the response was quite aggressive. So I thought that's exactly what I got to be talking about at the panel on Friday.

AMT: And you have made the point that there's a lot of philanthropy in that crowd of the lead, but you're opposed to philanthropy instead of taxes, why?

RUTGER BREGMAN: Well I'm not opposed to philanthropy and people want to give their money to good things. Go ahead. But philanthropy can't be an excuse for not paying your taxes and that's what's happening. And so you've got the global elite. The richest of the rich coming together every year here in the Swiss Alps talking about all their nice and wonderful plans. But meanwhile if you look at their business model, often they don't even pay their own workers a living wage. And then they talk all those wonderful words about this wonderful plan they had for education of girls in Uganda. Again I'm not against philanthropy but start with paying your taxes first.

AMT: So in fact there should be government policy that uses money to help, as well. And that with taxes.

RUTGER BREGMAN: Oh exactly. We need to crack down on tax paradises. And also we need to go back to what historians called the Golden Age of Capitalism, in the 50s and the 60s, when we had a way higher top marginal tax rates. In the U.S. it was higher than 90 percent, in the UK as well. And these were also the periods in history when we had the highest growth, the most innovation. So that's what I'm arguing for.

AMT: Were higher than 90 percent. Why did they go down?

RUTGER BREGMAN: Good question. We had this thing called neo liberalism. And Reagan and Thatcher and since the 1980s started this in this whole narrative, that the government can only do things the wrong way. And we forgot that actually most breakthrough innovations like the smartphone for example are funded by researchers and the government payrolls and that so many vital services from healthcare to education, we need government for that. But there is now a new generation that that is starting to see this.

AMT: And so how would this work. Are you talking about income tax on a super reich? Are you talking about corporate tax or both?

RUTGER BREGMAN: Well both indeed. We also need about wealth decks. So what we've seen is that Elizabeth Warren for example, the senator, has now come up with a new proposal to implement a wealth tax which would be a very very good idea. She's working with top economists on this like Emanuel Saez the French economists. He's actually a partner of the Thomas Piketty, the Economist became so famous. So this is really what comes out of the most rigorous empirical research, is that a top marginal tax rate for income of around 70 percent would be good. And that we also need a wealth tax of about 2-3 percent a year. That are really you know the policies we need to do something about this inequality that are spiraling out of control.

AMT: You know those who would be opposed to what you're talking about argue that by raising taxes to those rates you are creating disincentives for the people we depend on to innovate and create jobs. How do you respond to that?

RUTGER BREGMAN: I think actually the opposite is true. So what we need now is higher taxes to save capitalism. We now have a whole class of renters basically capitalists who sit back do nothing and collect rents, you know rents on their land, on their property. who are involved in the financial sector and don't really contribute anything to the common good. If we have higher taxes on the wealthy and lower taxes on labor, on the middle classes, I think that capitalism will become we more innovative and dynamic, just as it was in the 50s in the 60s.

AMT: Where does universal basic income fit into this? Because you've written about that, looked at that as well.

RUTGER BREGMAN: Well it's one of those ideas we could fund with higher taxes obviously. I think everyone deserves a bit of venture capital to make their own choices: start a new company, move to a different job, move to a different city. Something like that. We could do that.

AMT: So as you talked about these ideas, and I watched some of the video of that, but I'm wondering what the reaction was from the ultra-rich who were listening.

RUTGER BREGMAN: Not very positive to be honest. So you know I gave my speech on Friday morning and the response again was not very very good, aggressive even. There was one CFO from you who is really angry at me. So I went home, took the plane to Amsterdam. And I didn't expect much of it to be honest. But then on Monday it completely exploded.

AMT: So the executive is angry. What did they say?

RUTGER BREGMAN: Well basically that it was a very one sided panel. So then I shouted at him: 'Well it's a very one sided conference' and even more angry. He was also angry that I used the word 'bullshit' which seemed to me a very useful word to describe the conference, but he didn't agree.

AMT: You also made the point that I guess there were 1500 private jets that flew into here talking about climate change.

RUTGER BREGMAN: I mean there was David Attenborough giving a preview of this film about climate change that will appear in May I believe. And I saw people literally crying in there and then you realise that they came over there with 1500 private jets to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about climate change. What kind of world is this?

AMT: Rutger Bregman you are calling them out. So thank you for talking to me today.

RUTGER BREGMAN: Thanks for having me.

AMT: That is Rutger Bregman. He is an historian and author of the book Utopia for Realists. He joined us from Amsterdam. Well let's put this into a Canadian context. I'm joined now by Lars Osberg he is a professor of economics at Dalhousie University. He's the author of The Age of Increasing Inequality the Astonishing Rise of Canada's One Percent. Lars Osberg joins us from Halifax. Hello.

LARS OSBERG: Good morning.

AMT: What's your response to what you know of what Rutger Bregman was saying at Davos and what he just said to me?

LARS OSBERG: It is entirely accurate that the period of most rapid growth was the period of balanced growth, back in the 50s and 60s, when income at the top was growing at about the same rate as incomes throughout the rest of the income distribution. So we had a certain amount of inequality but it wasn't increasing over time. Since the 1980s, we've had 35 years in Canada where incomes at the top have been growing much more rapidly than incomes in the middle of the distribution. And so we've had stagnating incomes for the middle class and exploding incomes at the top end, and just a huge increase in income inequality.

AMT: What percentage of Canadians are super rich, pulling in multiple millions a year?

LARS OSBERG: When we talk about the top one tenth of one percent, that will be one in a thousand. That's the people who have had that most rapid increase in incomes over the long term. I mean there is some up and down with the stock market. As time goes on there is some variability, but the long term trend is for increasing concentration at the very top.

AMT: How does tax avoidance by the wealthy undermine transparency and economic equality in Canada?

LARS OSBERG: Well you have to realize that there is both tax evasions which is the illegal stuff. And that stuff that you occasionally get a glimpse of when something like the Panama Papers comes along and somebody releases the details. That's a big part of the problem. In addition there is the tax avoidance which is the legal method for avoiding tax. And we make it very easy for people the top end in Canada. You saw how easy it was when the government tried to make a little step just a couple years ago and cut down on the use of what they call Canadian controlled private corporations as a way of avoiding tax. There was an incredible pushback from the business community from people at the top end of the income distribution and the government largely backed off on it.

AMT: We always see, when there is talk of that, those who are pose point to small businesses. Where do they said this?

LARS OSBERG: Well small businesses are the excuse but they're not really the people who actually benefit big time from these tax avoidance mechanisms. Their importance is increased quite dramatically. One of the things that came out in the debate, it's mostly a hidden debate, is that the use of these CCPSs as they call them are essentially doubled as a share of GDP in just 12 years from 2002 to 2014. So those are making of an increasing fraction of Canadian income is going in a way that doesn't even show up in the income tax statistics, and because it's entirely tax avoidance.

AMT: So you're making the point that this is government policy that allows this as a [unintelligible] to evasion.

LARS OSBERG: Well I think there are three parts of the puzzle. One is the nominal tax rate that you pay. Two is how many loopholes you build into the tax system that enables avoidance. And three is how much you enforce the tax law and that enables evasion. So all those three components are really public policy, how serious you are about actually raising revenue. And the fact of the matter is that before tax income has been growing so rapidly at the top, the increasing fraction of the potential tax base is concentrated at the top of the income distribution. So taxes at the top are becoming increasingly important to the deficit and the public finances in general.

AMT: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has flooded a specific rate of 70 percent private the tax bracket. Would that make sense in a Canadian context?

LARS OSBERG: You know a lot of economic work done, and some really fine scholarship says it's not an unreasonable rate. Before you start thinking about how way out this idea is, just last week a Fox News poll came out and asked Americans how many of them agree with increasing tax rates at up for people making more than 10 million. And 70 percent of the respondents to this FOX News poll, 70 percent of Americans agreed with the idea.

AMT: So if you could redesign the Canadian tax system to correct any quality what would you do?

LARS OSBERG: I think you have to work on more rigorous enforcement. I think you have to work on getting rid of these loopholes that is just scattered throughout the tax system as it is now. And I think you also have to think seriously about increasing the tax rate at the top. I personally have advocated a 65 percent top marginal tax rate which has been advocate a lot of people around the world.

AMT: And then the reaction as you brought that idea around?

LARS OSBERG: Well I think people in the business community would prefer the whole idea just go away. In some sense as denial of a problem is a kind of a short run solution but it doesn't last very long. The social problems the increasing inequality creates are going to be with us and are increasing in intensity. So it doesn't fix things for the long term but it does kind of paper over the cracks in the short term.

AMT: You know this conversation is being had more with the midterms and the U.S. Ocasio-Cortez has been talking about it. People shadowed her down and she said she kept going. How does the growing accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few people help determine the political conversation here in Canada and in other western countries?

LARS OSBERG: Well I think you've seen a massive increase in income inequality and these really high incomes at the top. But eventually that turns into big fortunes at the top of the income distribution. Eventually the people that own that die and they leave it to their heirs. So what we end up with is a society which increasingly dominated by large inherited fortunes. And when you're already at the top the only place you've got to go is down. So the people really don't have an interest in equality of opportunity. Everybody is in favor of equality of opportunity in a rhetorical sense. But in terms of the actual funding that they are willing to provide for public education or public health care and are things that the middle class depend on, the will is just out there. So taxes matter hugely to the range of public services that government can provide and then the general equality of opportunity in our society.

AMT: The U.S. media was in a froth these past few days as the former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz publicly played with the idea of running for president. Listen to what he said on NBC earlier this week.

SOUNDCLIP

What we need is a comprehensive tax reform. What we need is sensible solutions to immigration. All of these things can happen under the current environment. Now I've also been criticized for being a billionaire. Let's talk about that. I'm so self-made. I grew up in the project in Brooklyn, New York. I thought that was the American dream, the aspiration of America. You're going to criticize me for being successful when in my company, over the last 30 years, the only company in America that gave comprehensive health insurance, equity in the form of stock options free college tuition. And Elizabeth Warren want to criticize me for being successful. No.

AMT: What do you think of Harry Schultz touting Starbucks progressive employee policies while campaigning against increased taxes for billionaires like himself?

LARS OSBERG: Well I think a decent hourly wage rate would also be a good idea for it for people who are working in coffee shops. And I think that's one of the things that we've seen over the last 30 years is a stagnation of wages at the middle part of the distribution. We've also seen massive increase in what many people called the gig economy, the unstable hours which means a huge amount of instability for people's lives. So those are the basic working conditions the two changes and working conditions which is the sort of things that, unions have argued for upfront for many years. There is a better place to start than a few fringe benefits.

AMT: We have seen in many elections in Canada won on a promise to reduce or kill taxes. Can you have this conversation here? Can our politicians have it?

LARS OSBERG: Well I think you're seeing an emerging change in attitude. There's a lot of evidence that the attitudes of the 20 somethings and the 30 somethings are quite different from the attitudes of the 50 somethings and the 60 somethings, because they have to live in this new world where they can't possibly afford to buy a house with. They have to go from gig to gig and where their wages are stagnant. So I think there is a changing perspective on the solutions we need. And in many cases this idea of cutting taxes has been a complete sham because it's been sold on the idea that you can cut taxes for free without having any impact on government services and that is just not true.

AMT: Okay Lars Osberg, thanks for your time today.

LARS OSBERG: Okay, it's been good talking to you.

AMT: Lars Osberg is a professor of economics at Dalhousie University. He is the author of The Age of Increasing Inequality: The Astonishing Rise of Canada's One Percent. He joined us from Halifax. Well for another perspective on this I'm joined by Joe Oliver. He served as Finance Minister in Prime Minister's Stephen Harper his Conservative government from 2014 to 2015. Joe Oliver is in Toronto. Hello.

JOE OLIVER: Hi how are you?

AMT: I'm well and I'm curious to know what you’re thinking as you listen to this?

JOE OLIVER: Well it certainly raises a lot of issues. I can't say I am in agreement with all the things that have been said. But I certainly am in favour of enforcement of our tax laws and I am against tax [unintelligible] I think something that the government should clearly pay attention to. But when we start talking about raising tax levels, I think people forget what the actual consequence of doing that it. There has been I guess a lot of talk about raising the taxes on people making it 10 million dollars. But of course the people who want to raise tax rates are really not talking about that group. They are talking about people in the upper middle class. Right now we have the tax rate in Ontario, I think its fifty 53 and a half percent. And over 50 percent, it starts discouraging people from from working. It cause them to spend a lot of the time and effort trying to minimise the tax bite. We tend not to collect nearly as much taxes as projected. When we raise the rates. In fact I mean is there some stats on that in Canada. When the recurring government raise the federal rate to 33 percent, there was a slight increase in the federal tax, a decrease in the provincial tax. Overall, it actually achieved nothing positive in terms of government revenue but it did discourage people from working did. It disincentivized skilled workers and executives from coming here or staying here as they have opportunities of more tax jurisdictions. And you know I guess the summarizing hurt the economy. It shrinks the tax base and it makes Canada less competitive and result in economic growth. So it can be harmful and counterproductive if it doesn’t work. And it’s unfair then why do it which is why our government was trying to keep taxes low and on a personal level rather the back to where they were when Prime Minister Diefenbaker was...

AMT: Okay let me let me just ask you, though, because you make the point that that’s the upper middle class. They're talking about the atmospheric earners. They're talking about the ultra-rich. If Canada did that would you be as opposed?

JOE OLIVER: To well the fewer people who are affected by the tax increase, I guess the better. But there's not going to be a huge amount of tax collected from people making over 10 million dollars because very few people make over 10 million dollars. That's not, I assure you, what they're talking about when they argue about increasing the tax rates to 70 percent here in Canada. Now it may be highly targeted in the United States. And so people will feel good that an ultra-billionaire pays a little more personal tax. Of course he or she won't because there the people with access to huge resources to tax planners and so on and they'll figure out a way to avoid it when people are talking about an increase to 70 percent generally, they're not talking about the ultra of the rich.

AMT: Ocasio-Cortez is. Fair enough. If not tackling it with higher taxes on the super wealthy, how do you think income inequality should be addressed?

JOE OLIVER: Well firstly you know there isn't the same level of income inequality in this country. And in fact that the middle class has been doing pretty well over the last number of years. I mean there is talk about how the growth rate has been declining somewhat and the reason is not because of tax differences. It's fundamentally demography. I mean over the previous 50 years the global tax rate was about global growth it was about three and a half percent approximately half due to productivity due to the increase in the number of workers. Well that the number of workers is going to fall precipitously and that would result in a decrease in economic growth of over 40 percent unless we increase productivity to compensate for it. That's difficult to make a bad number. So we're in a period of somewhat sore growth, but it's not because tax rates are low. I mean after all here in Canada the total tax bite if you include indirect taxes, GSP, TSP, real estate taxes, and so on, really resulted in people paying over 70 percent of their income in taxes and that's a hefty amount. So when you hit those levels frankly there's an issue as well as an economic impact which is not positive. We pay more in income tax than on basic necessity, more than income tax than on food, shelter and clothing. And that's way up from what it was in the 1960s. You pay for 42.5 Percent tax and 37 percent for basics.

AMT: Okay Joe Oliver we have to leave it there.

JOE OLIVER: Sure.

AMT: Thanks for your time.

JOE OLIVER: You're most welcome.

AMT: Joe Oliver, farmer conservative federal finance minister Stephen Harper. We reached him in Toronto. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q and his season of Canada Reads as lightning and Tom Power will introduce this year's panelists and books. Okay since we're talking about imposing higher taxes on the super wealthy, back in the mid-60s the Labour government of Harold Wilson in Britain levied a so called supertax of 95 percent of the country's wealthiest. The Beatles were in that tax bracket. And that inspired George Harrison to pen this tune. And I guess that got them more money. From their album Revolver, this is the Taxman. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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[Song: The Taxman by The Beatles]

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Thursday January 31, 2019 Full Transcript

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