Robert Koci
Unions lobby for CPP increase across Canada
Canadian Contractor Profitability BusinessCPP premiums are high enough.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is looking for support in combating an initiative that will hike CPP premiums now without tangible benefits to employees for years to come. Go to the CFIB website to learn more.
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WSIB, CPP, why don’t we just shut down all small businesses. Government agencies just don’t get it. They have a bottomless pit of tax dollars, and fees (so it seems) and take absolutely no interest in how difficult it is to actually run a successful business.
There is only really one segment of our population that can even consider retirement and that is government and public service sector.
It is difficult to stand up to these people as you become a target of governmental backlash through one of the agencies such as Revenue Canada.
This system is rotten to the core and needs to be fixed from the top to the bottom.
Look no further than the power plant that was stopped in Mississauga just before the provincial election. The new report states that it cost $275,000,000
of our tax dollars for the Liberals to get 2 seats.
No wonder they want to raise CPP!
Poor Dave Fagin, he may not know yet that the Oakville gas plant shutdown costs will be coming out this summer. They have tried to delay this for awhile, so put your seat belt on for these numbers.
It’s not poor me it’s poor us. The costs of these shutdowns does not get paid with imaginary funds, it comes out of all our pockets. We continue to be asked to pay for costly mistakes made by government officials. Indifference by the public at large fuels this behavior.
The attempt to increase yet another government deduction puts stress on all of us. This type of behavior does not contribute to economic growth or stimulus. The present action plan is a joke.
The present federal and provincial governments are totally out of touch. If they were actually running a business they would have been bankrupt eons ago.
Am I mad yes, should you be? YES.
I wish I was an economist so that I could make sense of not just this, but ALL of these regulations that relate to our contracting business (WSIB, CPP, Licensing, HST, etc.) and everything else that adds up to and equals my price = at least 2 times the price of an unqualified under the radar “cash contractor”, and the latter walks home with more money in his pocket than I do.
I feel like the biggest chump in the world being a contractor. Everyone is lining up to kick you in the nuts and take your wallet.
Yeah, sure, CPP is a good thing. Yeah, sure, I understand all that, but it’s not this “individual” and “independent” issue. Let’s just zoom out for a second and see what’s happening here. NOBODY gives a flying rat’s tail about us. I’m not just trying vent on this CPP issue.
My undeveloped and reptilian contractor brain can still grasp that from an economic perspective the Gov’t has a heck of a lot more interest in driving consumer purchases of goods (in our case, the sale of building products). How best to do that? Drive up demand and get home owners spending. Cash contractor, legit contractor, qualified contractor, “bought plumbing 1-2-3 at home depot and printed business cards” contractor…doesn’t matter. Labour costs need to go down too if we want to compete with China. That’s really zooming out, but it’s a race to the bottom.
It’s like we’re being punished for having chosen a career in this industry and we’re being punished because we don’t want to break rules and operate with “integrity”. With everything that has been shovelled on our laps, not me, not anybody I work with/know ever folded, pre-2008 or post 2008. We ate it and we held the line. Well my integrity and the integrity of all of my brothers is being used as the host of a parasitic society/government while selling us a bill of goods calling this whole spectacle a symbiotic relationship. I know when I’m being bled.
The bottom line is, if you’re going to drive up the costs of doing LEGITIMATE business then you better raise the price of doing ILLEGITIMATE business. Is the Gov’t in collusion with the criminals or am I putting that too mildly?
I can wax philosophical all day and all night about “How it doesn’t affect me” and pull the wool over and go to sleep. But it irks the &%$# out of me when at every friggin turn you see yet another break for the leaches, another + point for the dog &%$#^%#, another advantage for the rule breakers, another incentive for the criminals.
For every 1 hour that my qualified employee works, there’s over $10 above his wage that needs to go towards CPP, EI, WSIB, Taxes, and mandatory vacation pay. Now from his wages, on his end, the Gov’t takes another $6-$10 for every hour he works. Now take that arithmetic, multiply times 3 employees, now put those employees on a residential renovation project for let’s say months, now put the costs of permits/inspections/licenses/insurances/clearances/city fees associated with the average project, now put HST on all of that crap, now put it on a piece of paper, now put that in front of a customer, now put that piece of paper beside the snot smeared napkin of the guy who walked out the door before you walked in, you know the guy, the guy who doesn’t even exist on paper…whose got a calculator? You ready for the drum-roll?
“Oh but Peter, you should be marketting yourself to the kind of customer who wouldn’t entertain quotes from guys who don’t exist on paper…”
Take your ideals, take your delusions, take your rhetoric, take your theories, take your opinions, turn them sideways…
EVERYTHING that we do, and I’m not saying we’re special, I’m not saying we’re the only law abiding citizens in this great country, is exactly what keeps the lights on and the streets clean. But I’m tired of being steamrolled and left on the sidewalk. I’m tired of being the host for these parasites. I’m tired of my clients dishing out their hard earned and well taxed incomes to have access to an actual, legitimate business, with actual and legitimate trades who were deluded enough to believe they could ever actually have a promising future and some measure of job security outside of a Union.
Not everybody needs to be a raider to get through life. Decent, honest, law abiding professionals should have SOME measure of Gov’t protection not Gov’t extortion.
If they want to sink the boat, if they don’t give a damn about legitimate non-union construction companies/workers, I’m almost at the point where I’m ready to say well I don’t give a damn about them and I don’t give a damn about the lack of skilled trades or the bleak future of construction in this country. You want to sink the boat? Let them make of construction what all media/society’s bias has always wanted to make it…the bottom of the barrel where all the degenerates/alcoholics end up because they’re the only ones dumb enough and desperate enough to grovel at the trough.
I’m tired of fighting up hill.
I’ll take every dollar that would have went to the Gov’t (that $16-$20/hr for every employee) and invest it, income tax free, into raiding every crevass I can get my hands on. I and all of my employees will be far better off in 3 years than we ever would have with all of the returns from the donations added up over 40 years of service.
How about every decend contractor throws in the towel?
NOT A DOLLAR will the Gov’t get from us anymore. How about that?
How about we turn this whole industry into a cash-only proposition?
&^%$ your permits. *&^$ your licenses. &^$% your regulations. Come get me. Come get the guy who doesn’t even exist on paper. Come try.
How about we all fall off the face of the earth?
You want a pension plan? Let every other chump contribute, but not us.
You want EI? Cash in your pocket and a long line up of customers is great EI.
You want tax money to build roads and fix pot-holes? Go hit up somebody that gives a %&$%.
You want me to pay WSIB? I’ll take out personal liability insurance for pennies on the dollar. Go &*%$ yourself.
H.S.T. on labour? What labour? Don’t you need a business for that?
The point is. Why are WE holding the line for a Gov’t that hasn’t taken A SINGLE SOLITARY STEP for ANYTHING, in ANY way, on ANY level that my memory can recollect that demonstrated they have ANY interest in doing anything but sinking any fool dumb enough to call themselves a legitimate contractor.
On the surface, it’s all honky-dory, “the skilled trades are an important and vital part of ….” ah stfu! If the skilled trades are anything, it’s because of what the guys wearing the hard hats and work gloves have made them. Not because anybody else ever gave a damn.
It’s times like these when I’m reminded of what a racket we all pay into.
NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.
Either clean up this industry, from the top down and inside out and make it right for the good guys, or I’m out!
If you’re not going to be OUR solution, then I’m going to become YOUR problem.
Or otherwise hang up the hard hat and go into an industry where the purpose of my existence is not to be the feed in the trough. Where for every dollar that I pay into the extortion, I actually get a couple cents back, of something.
Every illegal immigrant I see is driving around in an SL Mercedes and I’m looking at the gas guage on my pick-up hoping I can make it home.
If I switch over to being a “cash-only” contractor (something which I was very proud to say I have NEVER done in my 14 years in this business), for the 18 hours I work every day, for the 3 full time employees that I have, I’ll have a half-mill home paid off in 5 years. How’s that for a pension plan?
I feel like such an idiot not pulling this plug.
Mad as hell & frustrated.
Serenity now. Serenity now.
Very well said, feel exactly the same way. Sucks to be the scapegoat for a corrupt government. You bust your butt doing what is right but in the end we are the suckers. Shame on this government for what they have done.
You have hit the nail on the head. I know of a contractor who has done just what you said. He now lives in a million dollar home with an outbuilding to die for. 80×120 with heated floors, transport doors, second level is for entertainment. He undercuts everyone and for some reason never gets caught. You wonder how he makes money being so cheap but once you see how much taxes and fees he saves it becomes clear.
This guy is 75% Cash and makes a fortune. Now lets take the 100% Cash guy what does he make as he pays nothing at all to the government.
I have been a contractor for 28 years now. Every year I make less money but do more work. I live in an area of high unemployment and cut throat prices. I try to put my prices up but loyal customers call you up and think you are trying to rip them off. You try to explain the problem but truly most clients don’t understand the challenges we face. Also most clients hate the HST and are willing to take the contractor who does it for cash. I go to work everyday feeling like a criminal as I have to deal with ministry this ministry that.
So what do I do? I’m beat up, worn out, and heading towards my goal of retirement. The only problem my retirement goal consists of meeting with my family and friends and a lot of flowers. They will talk about how hard of a worker I was never slowing down and always busy. Duh no $#%%, I didn’t belong to no union, I didn’t have the nice cushy pensions, I damn well couldn’t afford to put away enough to retire, Stat holidays for me were just another way to blow a few thousands dollars with no way of recouping the costs. And still I hear it time and time again on the radio. Were on strike, we need better working conditions, we need a raise, we push a button all day and have no idea what our job really is but we need more to push that button. Nothing against the button pushers but for crying out loud give your head a shake. The thing you don’t realize is the company you are striking against is secretly talking to their headquarters in China and you will be out of a job within 5 years.
The unions are trying to do the same to us by lobbying the government to create rules that put us out of business. The only problem is we don’t a headquarters in China to talk to. So we just bend over and take it.
Wish I could see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I was always told to stay away from the light unless I was retiring.
Signed, tired and worn out
I love you Peter. Well said! So true.