It’s obvious that most of us are not in the highest income bracket in Canada. And we accept that. Not every hard-working Canadian earns the six and seven figure salaries that some aspire to. Not every Canadian even wants that. Many of us are happy to have meaningful work, a roof over our heads and food on the table. In fact, the Bible tells us—if we have food and clothing—to be content. There’s more to life than material wealth. If only our MPs felt the same way!

On April Fool’s Day, every Canadian MP will be getting another raise, their 5^th pay raise since 2020! Backbench MPs already are paid $194,600 per year. With an estimated raise of $8,100 on April 1, MPs will have a base salary of $202,700. The Prime Minister’s raise is double that. After April 1, he’ll be raking in $405,400 per year. Of course, the other perks and benefits, taxpayer-funded expenses, travel, luxury accommodations and exotic meals are on top of those salaries. Over a million dollars has been spent on Liberal Cabinet “Affordability” retreats. With the average Canadian watching helplessly as the cost of groceries rises and forking out more for home heating and transportation (the inevitable consequence of carbon taxes, which are also scheduled to rise in April), it’s a terrible time for politicians to be padding their pocketbooks. But I don’t hear a loud cry from Members of Parliament calling for a moratorium on automatic pay raises. They could enact that in a day if they wanted to do so. But it takes courage to go against the flow.

In the past few years, with inflation and interest rates on the rise, Canadians are feeling the pinch. A dollar doesn’t go as far as it did. Wasteful spending by profligate politicians was already in evidence before Justin Trudeau ever darkened the door of Parliament, and it has gotten much worse since he has been at the controls. Even before covid, our annual deficits and accumulated debt were out of control. The politics of the pandemic added fuel to the fire when the PM found he could use public health and safety as a convenient excuse to throw caution (what little there was) to the wind and to throw limitless amounts of devalued currency at every problem he could find. We’re all paying the price for his reckless use of borrowed money to buy the votes of various advocacy groups. The damage done by those policies in terms of health care, cost of living, employment and stability for small businesses will never be fully known; but today, Canada owes over $1.2 Trillion and the interest on that debt costs taxpayers over $127 million every single day!

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is doing a fantastic job of researching and exposing the self-serving programs and expenditures of spendthrift and arrogant politicians and bureaucrats who have not yet found the brakes. Among CTF’s, many campaigns and petitions is one calling on MPs to take a reality check, look in the mirror, and represent the hardworking Canadians who want them to cut costs by voting to end their automatic pay increases. We urge you to sign that petition and support the work of the CTF.

And if you’re not already a member of CHP, we invite you to join us in our fight to return to moral and fiscal sanity in Ottawa. One of our policies calls for mandatory balanced budgets. We can’t spend our way out of debt. We have to take responsibility for the economic health of our country. It would be great if those currently occupying seats in the House would take the high road and stop increasing their already generous salaries.