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“Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
And in a modern society there are many different forms of taxation, each with their own rationale and purpose. While it would be impractical to address all the concerns with taxation, one that stands out is excise taxation of items deemed harmful to society.
The claim is that this tax is levied to pay for the damage caused to society as well as used as a way to raise prices in an effort to reduce use. It was once noted that a true free trade agreement should only be a couple of pages long. This is just enough space for a title page, the definitions, and then codifying that all trade is tariff-free. Unfortunately free trade agreements in practice never turn out to be quite that simple. The North American free trade agreement is close to 400 pages long, and still manages to make reference to other documents which outline further restrictions. In the past 20 years the population of Ottawa has increased at an explosive rate. In those days Kanata, Orleans, and Barrhaven were just small collections of houses tucked away outside the greenbelt. Today those areas are huge sprawling suburban neighbourhoods which have shown some of the fastest growth in the city. With new expansions being added every day these areas are indicative of the urban sprawl problems faced in Ottawa and many other cities.