At a convention of Canadian Liberals, tech executive Patrick Pichette proposed that youngsters eager to escape Canada be charged a half-million dollars for what he apparently regards as a privilege, not a right.
We must remind ourselves that the word “liberal,” here, is used in its modern, anti-liberal sense: of the ideology of ever-increasing restraints on everybody.
Very illiberal.
Even if Pichette means Canadian dollars, that’s still $360,000 in real USD dollars. Hardly a ten-dollar processing fee. More like extortion. He rationalizes that the kids owe that much anyway thanks to Canada’s heavily subsidized education system.
Terry Newman observes that Pichette “is a Canadian who left Canada for better opportunities himself.” He went to California and Google and now lives in London.
But Pichette and his de facto self-exemption are not the problem. The problem is all Liberals who “want to govern as many aspects [of the economy] as possible, pick winners, and unload the tax burden of the massive bureaucracy onto Canadians, the smartest of which understand this clearly and choose to leave.”
While Pichette’s proposal had his audience of Canadian Liberals cheering, sane individuals rightfully express varying degrees of alarm. After all, punishing people for leaving a country is eerily reminiscent of what totalitarian states do: prevent them from leaving altogether.
Pichette’s rationale itself is based on a misunderstanding. Are the half-million per student subsidies really there to educate? More like to placate well-organized lobbies of too-often ideologically driven careerists.
The idea that Canadian students actually receive half-a-million-dollar educations is not believable.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “The Price of a Canadian Education?”
You raise an excellent point about the ostensible cost of education.
Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate and Romania was in the clutches of Nicolae Ceaușescu &fam., I came across an article in a Romanian publication, denouncing what it called “brain theft”. The Communists of Romania then argued much as do the pseudo-Liberals of Canada to-day, that the human capital of escapees was the property of the Romanian community, which was thus owed compensation for the supposèd expropriation.
If this proposal approaches adoption, then intelligent Canadians will attempt to flee before the law goes into effect. After it goes into effect, educated Canadians who escape without paying might be able to claim refugee status of some sort.
In fairness, the US regime expects you to continue paying income tax to it FOR LIFE after you leave, unless you renounce your citizenship, in which case it demands a small bribe and, if you have a net worth of more than $2 million, an “exit tax” of 15-20% on all asset value in excess of $850k.