Tax rage has been in the spotlight this fall ever since the federal government first proposed tax reforms relating to corporations. Before long, the debate had gone from how the changes would affect farmers and convenience-store owners to whether Finance Minister Bill Morneau stood to benefit personally and had acted appropriately, to whether the ethics commissioner had done her job. And that was before the Paradise Papers surfaced.
It was ever thus, according a group of historians who specialize in the arcane business of taxation. Indeed, tax and tax revolts tell a dramatic story of our nation often missed in other, more conventional narratives. For fights about taxes are, at heart, less about obscure financial loopholes than about how people live, and about the rich and poor of a nation, and who gets what.
Elsbeth Heaman is associate professor of history and classical studies at McGill University and the interim director of the McGill Institute for the...
Elsbeth Heaman is associate professor of history and classical studies at McGill University and the interim director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. Her book Tax, Order and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada (1867-1917) (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017).
Shirley Tillotson is an Inglis professor at University of King’s College and an adjunct member of Dalhousie University’s department of history. She is the author of Give and Take: The Citizen-Taxpayer and the Rise of Canadian Democracy (UBC Press, 2017)
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