(Paru dans Les Affaires, le 26 avril 2008, p. 29)
Avez-vous déjà eu l’impression, en voyant des gouvernements surenchérir pour attirer des projets industriels, que l’ensemble des contribuables faisaient les frais de certains secteurs industriels choyés?
On le voit ces jours-ci avec la lutte qui s’engage entre le Québec et le Missouri pour obtenir l’usine d’assemblage des avions CSeries, de Bombardier. L’entreprise a toujours privilégié Mirabel pour y assembler la CSeries. Ottawa s’était engagé en 2005 à offrir 350 millions de dollars en aide remboursable et semble s’en tenir à cela. Québec a promis un prêt de 118 millions, mais se dit ouvert à augmenter sa mise.
Mais Bombardier voudrait obtenir plusieurs centaines de millions de plus, et donc commencer à écouter d’autres soupirants. L’État du Missouri débattait la semaine dernière d’un plan qui lui accorderait jusqu’à 40 millions de dollars par année en crédits d’impôt, pendant 22 ans, si elle assemblait la CSeries à Kansas City.
En principe, ce sont les avantages concurrentiels d’une région qui devraient motiver les choix d’emplacement des entreprises : disponibilité d’une main-d’oeuvre qualifiée et bon marché, infrastructures de qualité, impôt modéré, etc. Mais dans certains secteurs industriels, les acteurs ont réussi à entraîner les gouvernements dans une surenchère.
Chaque État dispose d’un arsenal de subventions plus ou moins déguisées sous forme de crédits d’impôt, de programmes permettant de réduire les frais de financement ou le risque commercial, de politiques d’achat local.
Peu importe sa forme, l’aide publique accordée à certains secteurs privilégiés est nécessairement prélevée dans d’autres secteurs. Ces derniers en subissent les contrecoups sous forme d’un fardeau fiscal plus lourd, qui fait fuir l’investissement et d’autres emplois. Mais pour ces emplois inaperçus personne ne se bat.
Sous des fortes pressions populaires, les États s’engagent dans une surenchère visant à arracher le projet convoité. À la limite, le bénéfice net de l’investissement est nul du point de vue des contribuables.
Difficile pour un gouvernement de renoncer unilatéralement à cette pratique. À moins d’offrir des conditions locales attrayantes au point de compenser l’absence de subventions. Le Québec n’en est pas là. Alors que faire? Sans éliminer toute aide, les États peuvent quand même s’entendre pour limiter la course aux subventions.
C’est ce qu’ont fait la Colombie-Britannique et l’Alberta avec leur entente TILMA. Ces provinces se sont engagées l’une envers l’autre à ne pas fournir de subvention directe ou indirecte ayant pour effet de fausser les décisions d’investissement ou dans le but d’attirer une entreprise de l’autre province.
Voilà un bel exemple à suivre pour le Québec. D’abord avec nos partenaires économiques les plus proches, puis à l’échelle internationale sous forme d’ententes bilatérales ou multilatérales.
L’abaissement des barrières tarifaires et non tarifaires au commerce international ne s’est pas fait en un jour. Dans le cas des subventions aux entreprises, nos dirigeants auraient aussi avantage à engager un dialogue avec leurs homologues d’autres États. Eux aussi peuvent se sentir entrainés, à leur corps défendant, dans une surenchère en matière de subventions.
samedi 26 avril 2008
jeudi 17 avril 2008
Why fees work - Montmarquette report should provoke a much-needed debate among Quebecers
Paru dans The Gazette, le 17 avril 2008, p. B-5.
When Université de Montréal veteran economist Claude Montmarquette filed his task force's report on user fees for public services last week, Finance Minister Monique Jérôme-Forget ducked for cover, stating her government had no plan to raise fees.
What an Olympic-class backflip! Was it not she who had ordered the report and mandated the task force?
But let's not be too harsh: I'll bet she was just following orders. Premier's office memo to all ministers: avoid any controversial reform. Avoid saying anything that could stir up a storm. Don't rock the Liberal boat that is sailing smoothly through a minority mandate. Subtext: let problems that require unpalatable solutions worsen; after all, there will always be time to deal with them after the deluge - err, the next election.
Too bad. The Montmarquette report deserved a better reception. It provides a much-needed firm base on which to hold an informed debate on user fees. It shows how much of the emotion that surrounds each proposed fee increase is unfounded.
So let's dispel a few myths:
Compared with taxes, properly set fees provide a clearer signal as to the value of a service received by its users, who must face the true cost of what they are consuming. This gives them an incentive to avoid overconsumption and waste. Rather than fixing fees too low, it is more efficient to use direct and targeted means to help truly needy users.
Example: a few years ago, a well-off friend of mine registered her child in one of our subsidized day-care centres. She was enjoying a prolonged maternity leave and didn't need a full time space. But hell, her turn had come on the waiting list and with a price as low as $140 a month, why deprive oneself of the flexibility? She could deliver her kid late or fetch him early, which may have been great for both of them.
But taxpayers were paying for that luxury, whereas other parents who really needed a full time space remained waiting. The bureaucratic solution to this type of waste is to make parents swear they need day-care full time and obligate them to leave their kids there a minimum number of hours per week. The market solution is to charge parents the true cost of the service and subsidize only those who are needy.
User fees should be a way of collecting public revenues more efficiently, rather than a way of raising them. Any hike in user fees should therefore be offset by an equivalent reduction in general taxes. This is the condition to make user-fee hikes acceptable to taxpayers.
Example: some time ago, our chief economist, Marcel Boyer, proposed a one-cent increase in the price of a kilowatt-hour of heritage pool electricity. That hike would be compensated by an $800 annual tax cut for a family of four. Low-income households would be subsidized.
A measure such as this would push all consumers - households, institutions, stores and industries - to reduce consumption or invest in energy-saving technology. The energy saved could then be exported to other markets, Ontario or the northeast U.S., at prices higher than domestic rates, thereby bringing badly needed extra revenue into the province.
Bottom line: as long as they're used to fund the service for which they're collected, user fees aren't about government stealing our money. They're about rational consumption of publicly funded services. And also, in the case of Hydro rates, about creating wealth to benefit all Quebecers.
When Université de Montréal veteran economist Claude Montmarquette filed his task force's report on user fees for public services last week, Finance Minister Monique Jérôme-Forget ducked for cover, stating her government had no plan to raise fees.
What an Olympic-class backflip! Was it not she who had ordered the report and mandated the task force?
But let's not be too harsh: I'll bet she was just following orders. Premier's office memo to all ministers: avoid any controversial reform. Avoid saying anything that could stir up a storm. Don't rock the Liberal boat that is sailing smoothly through a minority mandate. Subtext: let problems that require unpalatable solutions worsen; after all, there will always be time to deal with them after the deluge - err, the next election.
Too bad. The Montmarquette report deserved a better reception. It provides a much-needed firm base on which to hold an informed debate on user fees. It shows how much of the emotion that surrounds each proposed fee increase is unfounded.
So let's dispel a few myths:
No, fees aren't always going up. In the last 10 years, cost of living as measured by the consumer price index has risen nearly 20 per cent, compared with 13.5 per cent for electricity and three per cent for university tuition.
No, the Quebec government does not use fees more intensively than other provincial governments. In 2006-07, if the fees in effect across the country had been applied in Quebec, people here would have paid $5 billion more in fees for government services.
No, higher fees are not a hidden tax. Fees are paid by actual users of services, whereas taxes finance areas of government spending regardless of whether they serve any given taxpayer. As the authors point out: "In many ways, taxes are disguised, denatured or hidden user fees" since they are used to finance services and goods that could be subjected to fees; instead, the cost is borne by all taxpayers rather than by the users.
Compared with taxes, properly set fees provide a clearer signal as to the value of a service received by its users, who must face the true cost of what they are consuming. This gives them an incentive to avoid overconsumption and waste. Rather than fixing fees too low, it is more efficient to use direct and targeted means to help truly needy users.
Example: a few years ago, a well-off friend of mine registered her child in one of our subsidized day-care centres. She was enjoying a prolonged maternity leave and didn't need a full time space. But hell, her turn had come on the waiting list and with a price as low as $140 a month, why deprive oneself of the flexibility? She could deliver her kid late or fetch him early, which may have been great for both of them.
But taxpayers were paying for that luxury, whereas other parents who really needed a full time space remained waiting. The bureaucratic solution to this type of waste is to make parents swear they need day-care full time and obligate them to leave their kids there a minimum number of hours per week. The market solution is to charge parents the true cost of the service and subsidize only those who are needy.
User fees should be a way of collecting public revenues more efficiently, rather than a way of raising them. Any hike in user fees should therefore be offset by an equivalent reduction in general taxes. This is the condition to make user-fee hikes acceptable to taxpayers.
Example: some time ago, our chief economist, Marcel Boyer, proposed a one-cent increase in the price of a kilowatt-hour of heritage pool electricity. That hike would be compensated by an $800 annual tax cut for a family of four. Low-income households would be subsidized.
A measure such as this would push all consumers - households, institutions, stores and industries - to reduce consumption or invest in energy-saving technology. The energy saved could then be exported to other markets, Ontario or the northeast U.S., at prices higher than domestic rates, thereby bringing badly needed extra revenue into the province.
Bottom line: as long as they're used to fund the service for which they're collected, user fees aren't about government stealing our money. They're about rational consumption of publicly funded services. And also, in the case of Hydro rates, about creating wealth to benefit all Quebecers.
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