Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Opinion: For the good of the Liberal party, Trudeau needs to think about his future – The Globe and Mail

Justin Trudeau was hoping his housing budget would reverse the governments slide in popularity. Instead, things have gotten worse.

For the good of the Liberal Party he leads, the Prime Minister needs to think about his future.

The government gambled everything on this budget. Younger voters are unhappy. Economic uncertainty and high interest rates have worsened housing shortages, making ownership impossible and rent exorbitant for many. Their support has shifted emphatically from the Liberals to the Conservatives.

The budgets answer: billions of dollars to support new housing starts, housing infrastructure and apartment construction, along with measures to make it easier to secure a first mortgage.

Party strategists hoped the housing-focused budget would narrow the huge gap in support between the two parties over the next few months by winning back younger voters. So far, its not working.

A Nanos postbudget poll showed Conservative support increasing to 42 per cent, with the Liberals down to 23 per cent. Ipsos has only 17 per cent of Canadians giving the budget two thumbs up, while 40 per cent give it two thumbs down. Similarly, Leger has half of all Canadians rejecting the budget and only 20 per cent welcoming it.

A capital-gains tax increase included in the budget may be part of the problem. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland insisted only the very rich would be forced to pay. But it turns out the very rich include family doctors, other small business owners and people hoping to sell the cottage one day.

It also didnt help that everyone from former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge to Bill Morneau the previous Liberal finance minister, for crying out loud attacked the budget for increasing taxes in a time of weak productivity and little or no growth.

Mr. Trudeau is now ratcheting up his attacks on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who recently consorted with some anti-Trudeau protesters once again, and who has earned the dubious distinction of being endorsed by lunatic-fringe commentator Alex Jones in the United States.

But this isnt likely to matter much to people whose mortgages are up for renewal.

The most important legislative item, outside the budget itself, is the pharmacare bill. Once it passes, the legislative record of this government will largely be complete.

The supply and confidence agreement between the Liberals and the NDP is supposed to last until October, 2025. But its more likely the government will fall over the next budget in spring of next year, if not before. Once pharmacare is law, what possible reason would New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh have to keep this tired government alive?

Mr. Trudeau has pretty much run out of opportunities to change the narrative. Interest rates have not gone down as hoped. Housing starts will be down again this year, and will remain weak over the following two years, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, whatever the budget might promise. The economy crawls forward on its stomach.

The government has reached the point where it must both raise taxes and increase debt to fund programs that most of us dont care about or dont support. People have crossed their arms. They are simply waiting for the day when they can vote Mr. Trudeau out of office.

The Prime Minister has a choice. He can step down this spring or early summer, and let the party select a new leader. Or he can stay on and meet his fate.

Mr. Trudeau may believe that he and only he can prevent the ruination of Canada as he sees it at the hands of Mr. Poilievre. But how can that be true? Given the Liberals current electoral prospects, wouldnt someone else anyone else likely fare better?

Stories have surfaced that Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc might be interested. Mark Carney, former governor of the Canadian and English central banks, is giving speeches. Others are testing the waters.

A new leader doesnt guarantee a Liberal victory in the next election far from it. But more might be saved than in an election with the current leader.

The Liberal Party was in the ditch when Justin Trudeau came to its rescue in 2013. He needs to ask himself in what state it will be if he stays.

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Opinion: For the good of the Liberal party, Trudeau needs to think about his future - The Globe and Mail

Globe editorial: The Liberals’ capital-gains tax hike punishes prosperity – The Globe and Mail

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Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland deliveres the federal budget in the House of Commons in Ottawa on April 16.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

In her budget speech this month, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pointed to 1980s-era tax changes by the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney as a precedent for boosting the tax take on capital gains.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney raised the capital-gains inclusion rate to 75 per cent higher than the rate were establishing today, she said.

If one were to leave it at that, the Liberals come off quite well, having decided to boost the inclusion rate for capital gains the amount subject to tax to two-thirds, well below that of the latter years of the Mulroney government.

But Ms. Freeland was only telling half the story. The Mulroney government did raise the capital-gains inclusion rate, in two steps, to 75 per cent from 50 per cent. But that action was just one element of a broad tax reform that also included cuts to the corporate tax rate and top personal income tax rates, and a generous exemption for capital gains.

The Liberals have headed in the opposite direction, starting in 2016 with an increase in the marginal tax rate for individuals with a taxable income of $200,000 or more. The Trudeau government hasnt increased the broad corporate tax rate, but it has targeted sectors with so-called windfall taxes. So this months changes to the inclusion rate for capital gains feeds into a higher tax rate for higher earning individuals an increase on top of an increase.

The result is a bigger tax bite on capital gains: $19.4-billion over five years for the federal government, with a $6.9-billion spike this fiscal year. On top of that, Ottawa estimates that the provinces and territories will reap as much as 60 per cent of its own total, up to an additional $11.6-billion. All told, individuals and corporations could be handing over as much as an extra $31-billion in the coming half-decade.

Without the $6.9-billion windfall, Ms. Freeland would have had to rein in $17.2-billion in program-spending increases in fiscal 2024-25. The Liberals arent trying to improve the tax system; they are plugging a hole in the budget.

It is true that the changes proposed by the Liberals do equalize the tax treatment of dividends and capital gains. Thats an important principle of tax policy the idea of a buck is a buck, and that tax considerations should not distort investment decisions, notes University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe. On that narrow basis, increasing the capital-gains inclusion rate makes some sense.

But levelling the playing field does not mean it has to be levelled up. As was the case in the 1980s, the Liberals could have boosted the inclusion rate for capital gains but then cut the tax rates applied to those gains for individuals and corporations. Prof. Tombe notes that, had the Liberals taken a revenue-neutral approach, they would have been able to cut the top personal income tax rate by four percentage points rolling back their 2016 hikes.

The Liberals have gone to great pains to portray the capital-gains changes as a tax paid by the ultrawealthy, saying just 40,000 Canadians with an average gross income of $1.4-million would be affected. In other words: not your problem, middle-class Canada.

That assertion glosses over a couple of important facts, however. First, the intimation that the bigger capital-gains tax bite is linked to a seven-digit income is largely a red herring. The underlying income of anyone with capital gains doesnt affect their exposure to the higher inclusion rate. A person selling a family cottage where the individual capital gains exceeded $250,000 will pay more in taxes, even if they have a middle-class income.

More broadly felt will be the second-hand effect from higher capital-gains taxes on corporations. Shareholders (both individuals and pension plan funds) will feel that pinch, indirectly.

There is another basic principle of taxation policy: Whatever you tax, contracts. Higher tobacco taxes mean fewer cigarettes will be bought, for instance a point Ms. Freelands budget makes in hiking excise taxes.

Whats true for smokes is true for investment: increased capital-gains taxes will be a disincentive. Given Canadas deepening productivity woes, it is precisely the wrong policy.

There is a thoughtful plan that would create a level playing field for investment capital, iron out distortions and galvanize private-sector growth as the Mulroney Tories did in the 1980s. The Liberal tax hike, designed to pay for a spending spree, instead punishes prosperity.

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Globe editorial: The Liberals' capital-gains tax hike punishes prosperity - The Globe and Mail

Liberals’ plan to destroy super will drive up house prices – The New Daily

After a decade of failed policies and inaction to address housing affordability, the Liberals have reaffirmed their commitment to forcing workers to raid their superannuation to access housing and have now indicated that they will make every cent of workers retirement savings available at auction which will further inflate house prices.

This is an act of compounding bastardry.

The Liberals would once again as they have with other universal entitlements when they have had the determination to do so pull the generational ladder out from under young Australians.

Peter Duttons plan for the housing market is to make this generation of first-home aspirants choose between a dignified retirement and a house, a choice he did not have to make himself.

This will supercharge house price growth. Every first-home buyer would be forced to raid their super just to remain competitive if all of their competitors are tapping their super balances too. This policy is absolutely salivating to property developers, boomer property investors, and the banks who will get to write ever-increasing mortgages with this generation.

In an auction where everyone is bidding with their super, the only winner is the seller.

The Liberals policy robs workers of the magic of compound interest to enjoy in retirement. Workers, with their unions, fought for universal superannuation alongside an adequate age pension to ensure every worker not just the wealthy and management had a pool of retirement savings that maintained their income and standard of living into retirement.

A report by the Super Members Council this year found that forcing first-home buyers to raid their super savings could force median prices in the five biggest Australian cities to increase by $75,000. If a couple of 30-year-olds withdrew $35,000 in super for a house today, they can expect to retire with $195,000 less in todays dollars.

If the Liberals have their way, their policy would also widen the gender gap in retirement savings and disproportionately harm working women, who already retire with $136,000 less in superannuation over their working lives, according to a 2023 report by The Australia Institutes Centre for Future Work.

This thoroughly bad policy wouldnt just rob the workers who are forced to drain their super for a deposit, it would cripple the retirement returns of every worker in Australia. The preservation of superannuation for retirement is a core reason why superannuation funds have been able to get phenomenal returns for everyone and why super funds generate better rates of return than banks.

The fact that superannuation funds do not have to have cash on hand for them to use at any moment means they can invest for the long term. This means that rather than investing in something for a short-run return, they can build and generate returns from nation-building infrastructure like roads, property and airports. If superannuation funds are required to have the cash on hand to pay out their members for a house deposit, the capacity for workers to benefit from compound interest is completely diluted.

Every aspect of this generates harm and perpetuates the problems it purports to solve.

It doesnt make houses more affordable it makes them more expensive.

It doesnt help first-home buyers get a house it just makes them drain their super for houses that might have otherwise been cheaper.

It makes those who drained their super poorer in retirement by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It makes every worker in Australia poorer by smashing the ability of super funds to invest.

It is clear that this policy, promulgated by one-note anti-super ideologue Andrew Bragg, is designed to undermine the super system.

Setting the housing market on fire will do nothing to help people buy a house. It is clear we need additional supply of housing to make houses and rents more affordable. Building more housing, including social, affordable, and public housing, will make housing more affordable. This can also be facilitated by taking the handbrakes off supply, which is a meaningful step forward.

We need better rights for renters, so they arent subject to excessive rent increases and have more secure housing. And we need to ensure theres a fair level of Rent Assistance for retirees and those out of work to alleviate rental stress.

Combined with more secure jobs and higher wages, an evidence-based housing policy will mean more workers will get access to permanent housing and affordable rents.

A policy distractions like the one Dutton is tying himself to is yet another example of a policy that doesnt work for working people, but does work for landlords, property investors and the big banks.

Joseph Mitchell is assistant secretary of the ACTU, and a former organisation political director and policy officer, as well as working with the Innovation and Growth Taskforces

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Liberals' plan to destroy super will drive up house prices - The New Daily

‘Sopranos’ Actress Says People In Hollywood Are Too ‘Petrified’ To Cross Liberals On Social Issues – The Daily Wire

Drea de Matteo, an actress of The Sopranos fame, says people in Hollywood are too petrified to disagree with liberals on social issues because of the current political climate with President Joe Biden in office.

As part of a discussion with Donald Trump Jr. on his Triggered podcast, the Emmy winner quipped about how she is so liberal that she is conservative in todays politics and there are so many in the industry who share her views.

The Biden administration has tried to perpetuate a bulls*** message of unity and has used social issues as pawns to further their administration, which Matteo said did nothing but divide people.

This administration has just been hammering all of these things and people in Hollywood are petrified, she continued. What, are you going to speak out against race, and sex, and all of that stuff?

Matteo added, People are afraid to have those conversations, because first of all, you never win with a liberal. Youre just never gonna win.

By contrast, Matteo suggested to Trump Jr. that his father, former President Donald Trump, shares her apathy for the very social issues being used to stoke disharmony across the United States.

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I think he cares about whats really going on, which is behind the scenes, and those are the things that need to be addressed before anybody is going to have freedom with any social issues, she said.

The actress indicated that she would not be as outspoken if her personal experience had been different.

I really did want to fight, but I didnt think I had, A, the voice, B, the balls, Matteo said, adding how she kind of got thrown to the wolves, I felt like, and once I was out there, I was like Im out here, what am I going to do? Im out of my cage.

Matteo also talked about her support network.

I do feel like Im supported, you know, by my boyfriend I know this sounds crazy, but, by God, my children. My children they believe in what we believe in, which is freedom and unity the right way.

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'Sopranos' Actress Says People In Hollywood Are Too 'Petrified' To Cross Liberals On Social Issues - The Daily Wire

Opinion: The foreign interference inquiry features a parade of senior Liberals protesting too much – The Globe and Mail

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness at the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions in Ottawa, on April 3.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

We are partway through the mandate of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, a.k.a. the Foreign Interference Commission, which is to say we are all the way through the only part that matters.

The commission is supposed to report by May 3 two weeks from now on the first part of its mandate: to examine and assess interference by China, Russia and other foreign states in the 2019 and 2021 elections, and the flow of information to senior decision-makers, including elected officials and actions taken in response. In other words: what went wrong, who knew and what did they do about it?

The commissions final report, due by the end of the year, is supposed to assess more systemic issues surrounding how government agencies should best detect, deter and counter foreign interference. But these are not questions for which a public inquiry is the necessary, or even appropriate forum. They are the sorts of broad policy questions we elect governments, with the support of the civil service, to tackle.

The point of a public inquiry, and the formidable powers of investigation that go with it, is to delve into the sorts of things that governments would rather were not delved into: the critical failures, mistakes and omissions, including by current elected officials, that might have given rise to the situation being investigated.

That was never likely under the pseudo-inquiry conducted by special rapporteur and Trudeau family friend David Johnston, which was why it was established and why it failed. It remains to be seen how much further the current inquiry gets, given the limits placed on even its access to sensitive documents.

What can be said, however, after three weeks of hearings, is how much it has succeeded in establishing already. Recall the state of play before the inquiry.

In spite of a series of reports in The Globe and Mail and other media, drawing on scores of leaked intelligence documents and interviews with confidential intelligence sources, detailing how China, in particular, had attempted to interfere in the past two elections how it had run misinformation campaigns against certain candidates, particularly Conservatives, it considered unfriendly; how it had channelled funding to others, mostly Liberals, it considered friendly; how it had conspired to secure a nomination for at least one candidate in a safe Liberal riding, Han Dong, who went on to be elected; how it had attempted to intimidate a senior Conservative MP, Michael Chong; and how, despite the Canadian Security Intelligence Services repeated attempts to raise the alarm with senior government officials, up to and including the Prime Minister, nothing had been done about it, not even so much as informing the purported victims of the interference campaign it was still possible to pretend, if you tried very hard, that this was all a lot of fuss over nothing.

Who were these confidential sources, anyway? Were those documents accurately quoted, and in context? Besides, intelligence is not evidence: the documents could have been based, all of them, on hearsay and rumour. Maybe the leakers had political motives. Maybe there was other intelligence, not yet disclosed, that was exculpatory.

It is rather more difficult to play this sort of game now. We shall have to see, of course, what the commissioner, Justice Marie-Jose Hogue, says in her report. But nothing that has come out of the inquiry to date has materially challenged any of what was contained in the CSIS documents, or how it was reported.

Mr. Dongs appearance, in particular, did nothing to advance his case that he was an innocent victim of circumstance. There was his surprising admission, in testimony before the inquiry, that he had met with and solicited the votes of a group of Chinese foreign students who were later bused into the nomination meeting, a fact he had neglected to mention until then. He said a conversation with his wife had jogged his memory.

There was, too, his response to evidence that he had advised Chinese officials, in a conversation taped by CSIS, that an immediate release of the two Michaels would be seen as an affirmation of the effectiveness of a hardline Canadian approach as advocated by the Conservative opposition. It was not, as you might expect, I never said that, but I dont remember saying that.

Mr. Dongs memory failings perhaps explain why he has yet to be admitted back into the Liberal caucus, from which he exiled himself last year while he pursued his efforts to clear his name. But as efforts in self-incrimination they pale in comparison with the testimony of a parade of Liberal officials and cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister.

It has always been a mystery how, in the face of this hail of memos from intelligence officials, some at the very highest levels, warning of Chinas attempts to interfere, senior Liberals, inside government and out, could have remained so oblivious or having been alerted, could have failed to act.

Their testimony before the inquiry only accentuates the implausibility of the story. At every turn, Liberal officials responses were either we didnt see the memo, or it was not reflected in oral briefings, or in the face of evidence they received both, well, what does CSIS know anyway?

The Prime Ministers chief of staff, Katie Telford, testified that on a previous occasion she had ordered that a particularly incriminating CSIS memo be rewritten, based on her own intuition that it must be mistaken. Much to her delight, the agency obliged the very next day.

Intelligence agencies can of course get things wrong. And governments are not automatically obliged to accept their assessment. But can it really be acceptable that a government official can not just disregard an intelligence memo, but order its findings adjusted to her liking, without any checks or safeguards?

More worrying still was the aftermath of CSISs briefing of party officials on the Han Dong matter. The briefing, carried out during the 2019 election campaign, was classified, restricted to a small number of officials with security clearance. Yet, as a senior national-security official told The Globe last week, a party member tipped off Mr. Dong days later that CSIS had their eye on him.

Then there was the testimony of the Prime Minister. Much attention has been paid to Justin Trudeaus peculiarly vehement insistence that he seldom reads the briefing materials put in front of him. While he reads them when he can, as a summary of Mr. Trudeaus prehearing interview put it, in other cases he trusts that someone else will tell him if there is something he needs to know. Or as he said in his public appearance, the only way to guarantee, to make sure, that I receive the necessary information is to give me an in-person briefing.

This appears to conflict with testimony offered by Ms. Telford before a parliamentary committee a year ago, that of course the Prime Minister reads any documents he receives. But it is far from the only contradiction or anomaly in his testimony.

Mr. Trudeau testified that, while he was briefed by the partys national campaign manager, Jeremy Broadhurst (now a senior adviser in the Prime Ministers Office) on the Han Dong affair, he did not feel there was sufficient or sufficiently credible information that would justify this very significant step as to remove a candidate in these circumstances. Mr. Broadhurst, for his part, testified that he recommended that no action should be taken, because I thought the bar for overturning that that bar should be extremely high.

Oh please. This very significant step? If only. Political parties drop candidates all the time, and with far less justification because they posted something untoward on their Facebook page when they were 12, let alone because they are suspected of being the protgs of a hostile foreign power. This sudden respect for the sanctity of the local nomination process would be a lot easier to credit if there were any if the races were not often rigged by party HQ to favour one candidate or another, when they are not pre-empted altogether.

Indeed, Mr. Trudeau at another point smirked at CSISs naivet about the Canadian political process: nomination meetings, he said in a prehearing interview, are stacked with busloads of supporters for one candidate or another all the time. That may be true, but they are not usually under the direction of a foreign power told, as the inquiry also heard, that their families back home would face consequences if they did not show up.

So the Liberals, and Mr. Trudeau in particular, are left with many more questions to answer after their testimony than before. Their insistence, in particular, that briefing notes prepared by CSIS for the Prime Ministers Office, stating that Beijing had clandestinely and deceptively interfered in both the 2019 and 2021 general elections, that state actors are able to conduct [foreign interference] successfully in Canada because there are no consequences, either legal or political, and that until [foreign interference] is viewed as an existential threat to Canadian democracy and governments forcefully and actively respond, these threats will persist, was not reflected in what CSIS director David Vigneault personally briefed them, hangs by the slenderest of threads.

Recalled to the witness stand, Mr. Vigneault testified he might not have used those exact words in his oral briefings, but only because he had been telling them much the same thing for years. I can say with confidence that this is something that has been conveyed to the government, to ministers, the Prime Minister, using these words and other types of words, he said.

The question is why no one was listening. Or why, if they were, they stopped up their ears.

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Opinion: The foreign interference inquiry features a parade of senior Liberals protesting too much - The Globe and Mail