Just Stop
Poilievre’s demand for the NDP-Liberal Fall Economic Statement: Just STOP tax hikes, debt and inflation.
Ottawa, ON – Today, Pierre Poilievre challenged the NDP-Liberals to table their Fall Economic Statement with three common sense demands:
- Stop all planned tax hikes, especially the job-killing carbon tax hikes.
- Stop fuelling inflation, by cutting wasteful inflationary spending and axing the sales tax on homes to save up to $50,000 for homebuyers and sparking the construction of 30,000 more houses and apartments a year.
- Stop adding debt, by confirming that the deficit for this year and last year has not risen above the $40 billion guardrail that Finance Minister Freeland promised in this year’s budget. The government must also include a dollar-for-dollar law that requires all new spending be offset with an equal amount of savings. For example, the government should cut the discredited Housing Accelerator Fund to pay for axing the GST on homes, and bolstering the border should be paid for by cancelling the billions the government is wasting on $250 cheques and the two-month GST tax trick.
In spring, Trudeau will hike his carbon tax again by nearly 19 percent as part of his plan to quadruple the tax to 61 cents a litre over the next five years. The PBO has confirmed that the carbon taxes will delete $40 billion from our GDP, and a majority of Canadians will pay more in than they get back. Additionally, the Clean Fuel Regulations which also applies to Quebec will add 17 cents per liter by 2030 on the backs of Quebecers.
Since the carbon tax came into place, food prices in Canada have risen 37% faster than in the US. When you tax the farmer who grows the food and the trucker who ships the food, you tax all those who buy the food. There were over 2 million visits to a food bank in March 2024, and now more than one million Ontarians have to turn to a food bank to survive.
Trudeau is also hiking the capital gains tax, which will drive more jobs and investment down south. Half a trillion investment dollars have already fled Canada for the US under Justin Trudeau. Economist Jack Mintz has said this tax hike will reduce Canada’s GDP by $90 billion, real per capita GDP by 3 percent and employment by 414,000.
Trudeau has spent so much money that, even with his tax increases, he’s added more inflationary debt than every other Prime Minister of Canada combined. This wasteful spending has driven up the cost of everything. Even Liberals like John Manley and Bill Morneau agree.
Housing costs have doubled after 9 years of Trudeau, rising faster than in any other G7 country. Back in October of 2015, it took only 39 percent of the median pre-tax household income to cover home ownership costs. Now, it takes nearly 60 percent. In Ontario and British Columbia, government charges account for more than 30 percent of the cost of a new home. Axe the sales tax on new homes under $1 million to bring down housing inflation and spark more home building.
To get spending under control and stop adding inflationary debt, Trudeau must bring in a dollar-for-dollar law that requires an equivalent saving on any new spending. Liberals promised to cap the deficit at $40 billion, but the PBO now projects the 2024/25 federal deficit to be $46.4 billion, blowing past their own fiscal guardrails.
Only Pierre Poilievre will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. But until Canadians can vote in a carbon tax election, Liberals must stop the tax hikes, stop fueling inflation, and stop adding debt.