[MarchHare]

The Fraser Institute's methodology is horribly flawed. What they do is simply look at every type of personal tax the government collects and then divide that by the number of taxpayers.

For example, according to the Fraser Institute, the "average" Canadian spends $1746 in tobacco and alcohol taxes each year. This, of course, is ridiculous. According to Statscan, only about 20% of adult Canadians are smokers, so you have 20% of the taxpayers paying nearly 100% of all tobacco taxes. I contend that the "average" Canadian pays damn close to $0 in tobacco taxes, given that 80% of Canadians do not smoke aside from the occasional cigar for poker night or whatever.

Here are some other taxes that the Fraser Instutute contends that the average Canadian pays (value in parenthesis). How much did you pay last year for any of these? I suspect the answer for most Canadians is somewhere close to $0.

Import Duties ($245)
Profits Tax ($2660)
Natural Resource Taxes ($571)
Other Taxes* ($621)

*Whatever that means

All in all, their methodology is biased, flawed, and only exists to present a "worst case" scenario, which grossly overstates how much tax the average Canadian pays. As Devil'sAdvocate pointed out, Canadians are taxed at comparable (or even lower in many cases) levels to other Western democtratic nations.