Conservatives Oppose Trudeau’s Job-Killing Tax On Health Care, Homes, Farms And Small Business
The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of Canada’s Common Sense Conservative Party and the Official Opposition, released the following statement on Trudeau’s job-killing Liberal tax hike:
“Trudeau is hiking taxes on homebuilding during a housing shortage. He is raising taxes on doctors during a doctor shortage. He’s hiking taxes again on farmers during a food cost crisis. And he’s hiking taxes on small business while Canadians’ paycheques are shrinking. This job-killing Trudeau tax will drive billions of dollars of machines, technology, business and paycheques out of our country.
“Billionaires will not pay more because Trudeau gave them a two-month window to sell their investments and move their money abroad to pay lower taxes building foreign businesses.
“Trudeau promised 9 years ago that he would make some rich guy on a hill pay for all his spending. But by Trudeau’s own admission, the gap between the rich and everyone else has only grown in the 9 years he has been in government. Nine out of ten middle-class Canadians are paying higher income tax. And now he’s repeating the same broken promise.
“Nine years after Trudeau promised to help the middle class, their families cannot afford homes or food for the first time since the Great Depression.
“So, who will pay for this tax? Firstly, people who have one-time sales or disposal of long-term assets, like a grandmother trying to give some of her farmland to her children for homes. Secondly, 300,000 businesses, and indirectly, their workers will pay this tax hike, based on the government’s own numbers.
“Within 60 days of becoming Prime Minister, I will name a Tax Reform Task Force of entrepreneurs, inventors, farmers and workers (but no lobbyists) to design a Bring it Home Tax Cut that will:
- Bring home production and paycheques, with lower taxes on work, hiring and making stuff.
- Bring home fairness by reducing the share of taxes paid by the poor and middle class while cutting tax-funded corporate welfare and cracking down on overseas tax havens.
- Bring home 20% less paperwork by simplifying tax rules.
“Lower. Simpler. Fairer.
“This will help fix what Trudeau broke. After 9 years of Trudeau, Canada is going through the worst decline in our living standards in forty years; the worst housing inflation, the worst drop in income per person and the worst economic growth in the OECD.
“Business investment per worker in Canada is barely half that in the US, and our GDP per capita is smaller than it was 5 years ago, while the American economy is up 8%. The productivity gap with the US now stands at about $20,000 per person a year. A half-trillion dollars more Canadian investment has gone to the US since Trudeau took office than has come back in the other direction. That works out to $11,500 more per person of our money building factories, homes, mines, machines, and technology companies that now pays American wages.
“In 9 years, the national debt and housing costs have both doubled, homelessness is up 38%, there were 2 million visits to a food bank in a single month, including one in ten people in Toronto where there are now 256 homeless encampments.
“It wasn’t like this before Justin Trudeau, and it won’t be like this when he is gone. Only 9 years ago, the New York Times found that Canada’s middle class was richer than America’s. Rent averaged $973 for a one-bedroom. Our budget was balanced.
“Conservatives will bring home the country we knew and still love, with a Common Sense Plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.”