Interesting things from Twitter last night

So there were some rather interesting things posted to twitter last night. In case you missed it with all the talk about Michael Chong, I am speaking about this thread https://twitter.com/kevinmilligan/status/846103684601720832

I've been able to boil some of this down into simplistic rules of thumb that apply to the situation for the past few years.

For every 5 dollars the Federal government raises in revenue per capita, provincial governments raise 6, and municipal governments raise 2.

However, there is a massive amount of transfers. Mostly Federal to Provincial, and Provincial to Municipal. As such.

For every 4 dollars the Federal government spends of it's own money (outside of transfers to other levels of government) Provinces spend 7 (outside of transfers to other levels) and municipalities spend 3.

This means that Provinces get slightly more (from the feds) than they give (to municipalities) and that municipalities raise less than half of what they spend.

Assuming only "direct" transfers to the next level down (IE Fed to Prov, Prov to Muni) [This is not the case, there are always bizarre cases where, for example, a municipality might transfer money to the federal government for unexpected reasons] This implies Provinces get roughly 20% of all their money from the Federal Government, and, as such (by implication) are 20% beholden to the Feds. Municipalities, meanwhile, are 60% beholden to the provincial governments.

While the numbers have grown further apart, my old 'rule of thumb' still holds true; that the sum total raised by the Provinces (before transfers) and the Federal government is the same, while Municipalities only raise half this amount.



Disclaimer: this is based totally on the numbers in the thread, and not a personal examination of budgets by myself.