The NDP-Liberals Must Cancel Their Lawless Capital Gains Tax Increase
Ottawa, ON – Today, Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative Shadow Minister for Finance, and Adam Chambers, Conservative Shadow Minister for National Revenue, wrote this letter to Dominic LeBlanc, calling on him to cancel their lawless capital gains tax increase. The full text can be found below:
Minister LeBlanc,
After nine years, your government continues to cause chaos and misery for Canadians.
After completely losing control of spending, your NDP-Liberal government decided to launch a disastrous capital gains tax hike on workers, homebuilders, doctors, farmers and small businesses. But after Justin Trudeau paralyzed Parliament for months on end, and then shut it down completely to hide from an election, you failed to make the capital gains tax hike law.
Despite this, the Canada Revenue Agency has already begun collecting capital gains taxes at the new and higher rate, even though Common Sense Conservatives will never allow it to become law.
This chaos has real consequences for Canadians. You are taking money from small businesses without the consent of Parliament and have created a tax-filing nightmare for hard-working Canadians across our country.
Worse still, by the time you finally allow Parliament to resume its work, it will have been almost twelve months since you first promised to introduce this capital gains tax hike in the budget. This means you have created a lawless state of limbo for Canadians by imposing a tax without ever passing it into law.
Common Sense Conservatives warned your NDP-Liberal Government that this tax hike was catastrophic for Canada’s already weak and failing economy. You are hiking taxes on homebuilding during a housing shortage. You are raising taxes on doctors during a doctor shortage. You are hiking taxes again on farmers during a food cost crisis. And you are hiking taxes on small business and workers while Canadians’ paycheques are shrinking and investment is fleeing.
But you didn’t listen. And now, the CD Howe Institute has confirmed that your capital gains tax hike will cause Canada’s employment to decline by an additional 414,000 jobs, at a time when Canada’s unemployment rate is already surging and projected in your own Fall Economic Statement to increase next year. It will also cause Canada’s GDP to decline by $90 billion while GDP per capita will decrease by 3 percent, mostly within the next five years.
Enough is enough. You are driving billions of dollars of machines, technology, businesses and paycheques out of our country. Canadians should not have to suffer through this misery and chaos just because the Liberals are fighting each other for power and desperately avoiding an election.
As Minister of Finance, you have a responsibility to stop this job-killing tax hike before it does even more damage to our economy. If you refuse to do this, then at the very least, you must direct the Canada Revenue Agency to stop collecting this tax until after an election.
Only then can a Common Sense Conservative government put a stop to the chaos, end the economic vandalism, axe the tax and bring home powerful paycheques for all Canadians.