Ontario Budget

George Dube
 
Alfonso: On that note, we were talking about the team REITE unifying, a community, someone that is joining you and who And he's got all the time in the world right now, March 24th. He's got nothing else to do, but to hang out virtually doesn't have family or, wife and kids, or maybe he's getting the rust off the golf swing. Is the range open George?

George: Not yet, not at my club anyway.

Alfonso: That's right there. They're trimming with the little scissors there, but absolutely guys, George was at our first event in four years on March 22nd. Shall I incorporate right and we touched on that a little bit tonight. He's a Chartered Professional Accountant. He's a veteran real estate investor. When you say part of the team is shoulder to shoulder with you guys, you need a drummer, you need a singer right? You need the basis you need out of the whole band. You need the accountant and he's got the best bow ties in the game.

Francois has given him a run but we were going to have a bow tie of hashtag Francois. But George, with the bow ties. He was here today, the budget announcement and a shout out to Peter Cuttini as well too. I know George's business partner and confidant. And George, I want to give you a personal show with Colton.

I was talking to him yesterday and we were talking just ideas, going back and forth and I'm like, yeah, maybe in the next couple of weeks. He's like it's tax season. I'm like, yup. I'll give you a couple of months. No worries. Nothing urgent. And thank you for spending your time and probably the most busiest time of your year sharing with the REITE club and really giving it to the REITE club, helping us grow. George, I want to hand it off to you and thank you as always.

George: Thank you. I'll just take a couple of minutes here. And caution in the sense that I have not gone through the entire budget. It's several hundred pages long. So, this is a preliminary look that we get released late in the afternoon here, but I'll make some comments from what I've seen, but my caution is they're subject to change based on, of course, a further reading.

On the plus side, there were no radical changes from a tax perspective that were announced on the negative side or continuing side, if you will. And again, I appreciate it. There's going to be people that disagree with this thought process. But if you'd like debt mismanagement of finances, you've probably as a resident of Ontario been in paradise for 30 years for the most part.

There's no sign of that discontinuing in order for us to get to a balanced budget, the government is relying on literally a 12% decrease in costs over the next few years. After taking into account inflation and population increases. If they could hold that puppy steady, that would be a minor miracle in my mind, let alone decrease it at 12% to get back to neutral.

I don't even think these numbers are realistically In the ballpark of some type of reality. When I was going through it, I jotted down some points and you see me looking off to my other monitor here. One of the comments they'd made was they want to encourage the federal government to strengthen what we call GAR, the General Anti-avoidance Rule, which in English means if the government doesn't like what we've done with, from a tax perspective, they have the ability to just change it to what they think is appropriate. And it's not perhaps quite that draconian, but exceptionally close to it. On the plus side we're obviously leaving a tremendous amount of debt to our kids and grandkids. But there's a variety of tax credits, incentives, et cetera, that are popping out.

I would encourage everybody to look to see whether they qualify for one, whether for themselves personally, because they have kids, job training credits, business credits, business grants, the thrown away so much money. There's got to be something that you qualify for. Take a look because. I would suggest to you that in the not that distant future, the government's going to come calling for that money because somebody sooner or later needs to pay for it.

We've gone in this 30 year time period. We've increased our percentage, our GDP has gone up three times. That's astronomical can't be sustained. I appreciate they obviously had significant spending last year, this year as a result of the pandemic, but there's not a solution in place so they haven't gone to that next step.

I think from an investing standpoint, a business standpoint, we need to be prepared for what's going to come down the road. I think it's fairly inevitable what that's going to look like. Another point I wrote down is the spending that we have currently on our interest costs. It outweighs what we spend on post-secondary education.

What an enormous waste of money in my opinion to the government's credit. I love the fact that they have actually some budgeted figures up until 20, 30. I would dearly love if the federal government and other provinces follow that model to say, yeah, let's start trying to think long-term. I may not agree with what they're doing long-term but at least they're willing to put it down on paper, which I think is an enormous improvement over other governments. From a real estate investor's perspective, particularly pay attention to whether they did announce different funding programs, or I don't want to say that they approved any transportation projects, specifically.

Some of them were just looking at those, but whether that was public transit particular GTA, Hamilton, KW and then a variety of major highway funding look or programs themselves take a look because that can influence where we would like to invest of course. And all just ended off here with a comment to say and Alfonso, thank you for mentioning that I'm really swamped, trying to help as many people as possible as is my team. And they're doing it in my mind. Yeoman's work for that. 

I'm not gonna necessarily be able to tap onto the next few events until May emerges here, but I greatly appreciate the opportunity of celebrating with everyone here our fourth anniversary of tremendous work by the founders and everybody involved. Thank you for allowing me to be part of that little puzzle.