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I like the advice provided by comedian Jay Leno on the issue of taxes: Worried about an IRS audit? Avoid whats called a red flag. Thats something the IRS always looks for. For example, say you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. Thats a red flag.

Our version of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the Canada Revenue Agency, will have another red flag to look for on the tax returns of Canadians if the Liberals make good on a promise made this week in their election platform. The party announced that it will impose a 15-per-cent minimum tax on the highest income earners those earning more than $216,511 in 2021. Evidently, the aim is to eliminate the ability to artificially pay no tax through excessive use of deductions and credits according to the proposal.

This 15 per cent would be a federal tax, of course, so the actual rate of tax paid by these folks would be higher after adding provincial or territorial taxes.

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Now, nobody is suggesting that high-income Canadians should complain about a 15-per-cent federal tax rate and theyre not. The reality is, almost all high-income Canadians are paying significantly more than this in taxes annually even after claiming the most in tax deductions and credits available. I mentioned recently that the Fraser Institute has calculated that the top 20 per cent of income earners in Canada pay 63.2 per cent of all personal income taxes and the bottom 20 per cent of income-earning families pay 1 per cent of those taxes. High-income earners are already paying their fair share.

There are several problems with the proposed minimum tax announced Wednesday. Let me share the key issues.

Our tax law already penalizes those who might take advantage of excessive deductions and credits to reduce taxes below an acceptable threshold. This is done by way of the alternative minimum tax (AMT). The most common situations that give rise to the AMT are reporting capital gains on your tax return, claiming losses resulting from capital cost allowance on rental properties, limited partnership losses, carrying charges (such as interest expenses), stock option deductions, losses from resource properties (such as flow-through shares), and federal dividend tax credits, among other things. Guess what? The list captures all the key types of situations that high-income Canadians may experience in their tax filings that give rise to lower effective tax rates for them. The AMT can effectively be returned to the individual later in the form of a tax credit but only once their taxable income is high enough.

The highest-income Canadians have most of their wealth stored in three types of assets: real estate, private businesses and marketable securities. These assets often afford favourable tax treatment in the form of capital gains tax rates when the assets are sold, the lifetime capital gain exemption (LCGE) to shelter gains on private company shares, and enhanced tax savings when investments are donated to charity. These are some of the largest tax preferences utilized by these high-income Canadians, and these tax preferences are there to provide incentives to Canadians to start businesses, provide housing and donate to charity all very good things. These are the same tax preferences that the Liberals are offended by and are going to penalize by applying the 15-per-cent minimum tax.

The Liberals have estimated that the additional tax revenue to be raised from this minimum tax is $1.7-billion over five years an average of $340-million a year. The Liberal platform estimates federal deficits continuing for the foreseeable future with no timeline for erasing the deficit. And that deficit will be as high as $156.9-billion this year. The deficits will be $14-billion higher per year, on average, than the pre-election forecast made by the Parliamentary Budget Officer in August. Adding $340-million to the coffers through this proposed minimum tax will do virtually nothing to reduce the deficit or shrink the federal debt. What it may do is potentially change the behaviour of high-income earners when it comes to their investment decisions and gifts to charity. The whole thing is a bad idea.

Look, were in the middle of an election campaign. All parties want to appeal to voters by announcing what they stand for I get it. But when it comes to taxation, policies have to make sense particularly coming out of a pandemic that has fundamentally changed the financial lives of so many Canadians and has left our country in a mountain of debt.

Tim Cestnick, FCPA, FCA, CPA(IL), CFP, TEP, is an author, and co-founder and CEO of Our Family Office Inc. He can be reached at tim@ourfamilyoffice.ca.

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Three problems the Liberals' proposed tax on highest income earners will cause - The Globe and Mail

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By Deb Schulte, Special to Postmedia Network

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The pandemic tragically highlighted serious and long-standing challenges in Canadas long-term care sector. Canadians are rightly concerned about the level of care and protection provided for their loved ones. Now is not the time for half measures; its time for real change.

The Conservative plan for long-term care will squander this opportunity to provide needed help for seniors.

Better care for those living in long-term care starts with improved conditions for workers. Although the Conservatives propose to double the Canada Workers Benefit, it wont help most personal support workers whose incomes are above $32,244, the average for most nurse aides and orderlies. It wont incentivize people to start careers as personal support workers.

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In effect, the Conservative plan fails to address instability in a sector dominated by women, over a third of whom are immigrants.

While the Conservatives say that they want to invite the provinces to work with us to develop a set of best practices for long-term care, this duplicates work already underway by experts at the Health Standards Organization (HSO) and CSA Group.

When Conservative Leader Erin OToole was asked about funding for long-term care, he pointed to his promise to increase the Canada Health Transfer. But the Canada Health Transfer is a general fund that can be used for any health-care initiative, such as clearing backlogs.

The only way for the government of Canada to make permanent changes in this sector is by working cooperatively with provinces and territories, who have the constitutional jurisdiction to regulate long-term care. That requires finding common ground backed by significant, targeted federal investments.

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The Liberals have a strong record of working cooperatively with their provincial and territorial partners and have a new $9 billion plan that will deliver better care for Canadians in long-term care.

It starts by improving working conditions and raising wages for personal support workers. They are the heroes on the frontlines taking care of our loved ones.

Too many have precarious jobs in multiple homes and do not earn enough to get by on. This drives turnover and increases infections as workers spread outbreaks between homes.

A re-elected Liberal government will work with provinces and territories to ensure personal support workers receive a wage of at least $25 an hour. To address the workforce shortage, we will invest $500 million to train up to 50,000 new personal support workers.

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Over the last 20 months, weve seen how standards without enforcement fail to protect workers and residents. So we will work with our partners to introduce a Safe Long-term Care Act that ensures standards of care are upheld across the country. It will be informed by the work of the HSO and CSA.

During the pandemic, we saw the virus spread through multi-bed rooms and outdated ventilation systems.

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A re-elected Liberal government would invest a further $3 billion to provide major renovations in long-term care homes and improve the quality and number of beds.

All this adds to the almost $5 billion we have invested since the pandemic started for infection prevention and wage increases for low-income essential workers.

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Finally, seniors want to stay in their own homes as long as possible as they age. The Canadian Institutes of Health Informationreportsthat as many as one in nine seniors in long-term care could have been cared for at home with the proper supports.

Liberals have a plan to help more seniors age at home.

We will double the Home Accessibility Tax Credit, providing an additional $1,500 for renovations to make seniors homes more accessible. We will create a new Multigenerational Home Renovation tax credit to help families add a secondary suite to their home so a family member can live with them. And the new Age Well at Home initiative will fund practical supports that connect low-income and vulnerable seniors with help for tasks they are no longer able to manage.

In 2022 we are renegotiating homecare agreements with provinces and territories to improve access to homecare and transitions to long-term care or palliative care.

Everyone living in long-term care deserves safe, dignified and quality care. Only the Liberals offer an ambitious, achievable plan to get there.

Deb Schulte is the federal Liberal candidate for King-Vaughan and the Minister of Seniors.

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SCHULTE: Liberal plan hits the target for real change in long-term care - Toronto Sun

Luca Disbrow / Daily Nexus

Over the past year, Ive watched a variety of terms go from tiny propositions to subjects of huge discourse that are regularly utilized by everyday people and mass corporations alike.

You are likely familiar with some of these terms folx, womxn, Latinx, houseless, BIPOC and many more. They clog up our Instagram feeds, fill up Twitter threads and even pop up in official emails from our university.

An email from UC Santa Barbara Career Services via Handshake on Feb. 21, 2021.

A new language has been formed, one created and used with the belief that it constructs a more understanding, safe and welcoming environment for the people it claims to serve. However, this language has a plethora of issues, beginning with one that we see on social media almost every day: It has perhaps inadvertently created a sect of people who see this terminology as the ultimate factor in determining whether or not the people, organizations, companies and governments in their lives are woke.

More often than not, the people who use this terminology are those who identify as liberals or whose views fall into the realm of liberalism, and once they have this language, they use it as a litmus test to determine whether those around them are serious about social causes.

This is a real shame, exemplified in terms like BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Attempts at explaining BIPOC to my Japanese relatives ends with them simply blinking at me in confusion. My aunties were raised in an era where they were described as colored or Oriental. Theyve barely begun to grasp the new label of POC (People of Color). But would you look these 60-year-old women in the eyes and tell them they are wrong for not understanding and immediately applying the term BIPOC? Language evolves so quickly that it is a mistake to shun people simply because they fail to use a fleeting term, especially those with valuable insight to share, like my aunties, whose lived experiences in post-WWII America have shaped my understanding of racism.

Additionally, many of the people who belong to these minority groups are entirely averse to this language.

For example, the term womxn was proposed with the intention of including trans and genderqueer women. However, trans women are quick to point out that adding the x to women simply further alienates them by denying that they are true women after all. Rather than calling them by their deserved title, women, the term womxn relegates trans women to being a sort of woman-tangent, never a true woman.

Language evolves so quickly that it is a mistake to shun people simply because they fail to use a fleeting term, especially those with valuable insight to share, like my aunties, whose lived experiences in post-WWII America have shaped my understanding of racism.

And perhaps the most glaring problem with terminology like this is that the effort to stand up for trans women, people of color, homeless people, etc., often ends at this utilization of inclusive language.

Rather than taking a further step to fight injustice within laws and community spaces or to support local organizations that fight these problems, people seem to think that using this language is enough that they can stop there and then it puts them beyond racism, beyond sexism, beyond cancellation. Surely someone so woke as to refer to homeless people as their houseless neighbors could never do any wrong.

One prime example of this is a recent comment from President Joe Biden (which was, in my opinion, a deeply telling moment as far as Bidens understanding of human rights goes). In a July press conference discussing the importance of adults getting vaccinated, Biden was quoted as saying, Its awful hard, as well, to get Latinx vaccinated as well. Why? Theyre worried that theyll be vaccinated and deported.

Is there anything that sums up misguided American politics more than those few sentences? Those phrases utterly stereotype and demean an entire group of people in mere seconds.

But one cannot deny that Biden really thought he did something. He took his inclusion of woke terminology to mean that he was above racism that everyone would accept his statement as truth, or at least as harmless, because he had done the unthinkable! The brave Biden had integrated the internet-speak term Latinx into a real press conference, broadcasting it to millions of American households that would now be exposed to a new idea.

He did not even realize that he really has no right to use this terminology. As Biden has little experience within the Latin American community and no real background in social advocacy, this usage of the term does not feel earnest in the slightest. And, when used in tandem with overt prejudice, his words take a condescending tone. Whether intentional or not, Biden has now seemingly weaponized a term whose original purpose was to uplift and empower.

Thats the very problem with this language.

Because he utilized a fun little woke term, Biden felt no pressure to amend his statements or confront his racist way of explaining vaccination issues in the United States. He believed that he had provided an excellent answer to questions about U.S. vaccination statistics. He didnt think about examining how these communities statistically have less access to vaccines or mentioning how misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine is rampant throughout the U.S.

No, he instead blamed it on a racist and inflammatory thought that the famously faulty Biden brain machine cooked up (amongst many other great ideas, like voting in favor of using force in Iraq in 2002, relentlessly bombing Syria in February of 2021 and authorizing the notorious 1994 crime bill that perpetuated mass incarceration).

Finally, its worth noting that these terms often originated in small communities who had extremely specific purposes for them. Unfortunately, these definitions have been significantly altered over time, largely due to the spreading of misinformation on the internet. For example, a 2020 article from Shape defined the term folx as being used to specifically display inclusion of gender-queer, transgender and agender folks.

However, back in 2014, the term folx was mainly utilized by grassroots organizations to designate People organizing and theorizing in queer, trans, and other people of color. This term has gone from highlighting community organization to being thrown around as a replacement for the already-genderless term folks in an effort to highlight ones wokeness.

The danger with this vocabulary is not merely that it needlessly excludes those who do not utilize it or that it excuses people from internal examination it is that it robs the communities it claims to protect of language that was special to them. In making it mainstream, the internet has corrupted its meaning.

This terminology is dangerous. It excuses people from examining their own possibly racist internal biases. It creates infighting within the left as people disagree about the value and usage of this new vocabulary. And much of its mainstream use is only a shallow imitation of its original purpose.

Rather than falling into the trap of obsessing over the language of liberalism, the left needs to come together and focus on what has always been the most important thing: improving the quality of life for people around us with strong action. Settling for words alone is, frankly, dangerous.

Syd Haupt couldnt care less about the term BIPOC and seriously thinks everyones efforts would be better put towards donating to J-TOWN Action and Solidarity.

A version of this article appeared on p. 20 of the Aug. 26, 2021 print edition of theDaily Nexus.

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The Language of Liberalism - Daily Nexus

The Liberal Party is promising, if re-elected, to require the oil and gas industry to curb its greenhouse gas emissions at a pace and scale needed to meet net-zero emissions by 2050, but experts and environmentalists want details before getting their hopes up.

The climate plan highlights a number of initiatives, like energy efficiency retrofit grants and making sure all vehicles sold after 2035 are zero-emission vehicles, but the plans centrepiece is a commitment to cap and lower emissions from the oil and gas industry a move experts say has long been the missing piece to a credible climate plan.

We're effectively capping oil and gas emissions in this country, and saying there will be five-year targets that will be established, that will be binding, on the pathway to net zero, said incumbent North Vancouver candidate Jonathan Wilkinson.

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There needs to be a path, and that path needs to be a path that has requirements, not simply aspirational goals, he added.

The plan is to set five-year targets, starting in 2025, based on the advice of the Net-Zero Advisory Body. Wilkinson confirmed the plan is focused on reducing absolute emissions rather than emission intensity per barrel. Emission intensity refers to the emissions generated when producing a product, but from a climate perspective, absolute emissions are what count.

It's fine, and in some respects important, that the sector improves emission intensity, but emission intensity is not sufficient because if you have more improvements yet increase production, then you end up with an increase in absolute emissions, said Wilkinson.

That means any expansion with respect to the oilsands would have to fit within the cap we've put in place and the reductions that would be required, he said. So the only way you could see significant expansion in the oilsands is if you saw enormous improvements in emission intensity.

Experts Canadas National Observer spoke with applauded the Liberals for recognizing that emissions in the oil and gas sector need to be regulated if there is any chance to reduce greenhouse gases in line with what science demands, but called the commitment too vague.

How much of this is (based) on carbon capture technology? How much of this is actually stepping in and saying no new expansion? asked Cam Fenton with climate group 350. There's way too much wiggle room built into it at this point in time, which is worrying ... There's a very big difference between whether or not this is a plan to wind down versus wind up and offset.

Fenton said the platform doesnt read like the Liberals grasped the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which United National Secretary General Antnio Guterres called a code red for humanity.

This reads more like what have we already promised, what have we put forward, and what're the new things we can add in, particularly to address the most significant critiques we're facing, he said. When you look at the things they're most worried about, a lot of it has to do with their foot-dragging on the Just Transition Act, and then the big elephant in the room of the climate plan has always been the lack of a plan for oil and gas emissions.

So this feels more like it's gilding the lily of their existing plan, as opposed to actually reacting or responding to the scale of the crisis.

Pembina Institutes Alberta regional director Chris Severson-Baker says oil and gas companies that have already made net-zero pledges should welcome the Liberal announcement.

It's sort of counterintuitive, but they've come out and made these pledges and now a major party is announcing that path to net zero is actually going to be part of government policy, he explained. Companies have made these net-zero pledges, but without policy certainty and an actual road map, they're going to find it very challenging to actually secure the investment capital they would need.

The most notable net-zero pledge from the oilsands came in June when Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy, the companies responsible for 90 per cent of oilsands production, declared an alliance aimed at reaching net-zero through a multibillion-dollar carbon capture utilization and storage plan that would connect a sequestration hub to the oilsands with a massive trunkline.

This week Reuters revealed Natural Resources Canada is planning two major carbon capture projects, estimated to capture 15 million tonnes of carbon annually.

Severson-Baker said a suite of policies for the oil and gas sector is whats needed because the carbon price on its own doesnt cut it.

You hear it all the time talking to companies and the finance sector (that) they discount the carbon price, he said. They discount the carbon signal because they don't have enough details or certainty about how things are going to unfold, and it results in an inability to actually move forward.

He said that five-year plans with clear benchmarks, along with clean fuel regulations, and gradual increases to the carbon price are what provide the type of certainty needed for major investment decisions.

Elsewhere in the Liberal climate plan is a commitment to end thermal coal exports by 2030, which builds off a previous goal to phase out domestic thermal coal. In June, Wilkinson also announced what is effectively a ban on new thermal coal mines due to their greenhouse gas impact.

If the argument is, We need to stop exporting thermal coal because it's driving emissions elsewhere, the exact same logic applies to oil and gas, said Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada.

Climate Action Network Canadas domestic policy manager Caroline Brouillette echoed the sentiment.

In Canada we are still not ready to have an honest conversation about what the International Energy Agency's net-zero by 2050 report tells us, which is that to contain global warming to 1.5 C there can be no new investment in fossil fuels, she said. It seems like we're ready to address the coal component of that reality, but talking about the end of oil and gas is still a difficult topic in Canada.

Obviously it's a complex and difficult transition that we'll need to undergo, but really this election should be about naming these hard choices that we'll have to make in the coming years, she said.

Another notable commitment in the climate plan is a pledge to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas by 75 per cent from 2012 levels by 2030. That appears to represent a step up from 2016s commitment to reduce emissions 40 to 45 per cent below 2012 levels by 2025.

Methane has been identified as a priority for greenhouse gas emission reductions by the IPCC because it warms the planet faster than CO2 but has a shorter life in the atmosphere.

John Woodside / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer

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Liberals name the elephant in the room: Oil and gas emissions must come down - National Observer

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court told George W. Bush that fighting a global war on terrorism did not entitle the president to evade or ignore the requirements of the Constitution. That decision, Boumediene v. Bush, would go down in the books as one of the most significant modern rulings against wartime government power. "We'll abide by the Court's decision," Bush said. "That doesn't mean I have to agree with it."

What if Bush did not abide by the Court's decision? What if Bush said the Court was dead wrong and that his administration would not be bound by its erroneous judgment? What if subsequent presidents followed Bush's lead and ignored the Court whenever their own favored policies happened to lose?

Such what ifs are the driving force behind Justice Stephen Breyer's timely and important new book, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics (Harvard University Press). The 83-year-old Supreme Court justice is well aware that many modern liberals want President Joe Biden to pack the Court and create a new liberal supermajority. Breyer thinks those liberal court packers are being both dimwitted and shortsighted. "Think long and hard," Breyer warns them, "before embodying those changes in law."

Court packing is a naked power grab and an attack on the independence of the judiciary. It is a tit-for-tat race to the bottom. One party expands the size of the bench for nakedly partisan purposes, so the other party does the same (or worse) as soon as it gets the chance. Breyer understands this. He also understands something else: If the authority of the Supreme Court is trashed and squandered by court packing, then liberalism itself is going to suffer in the long run.

Let history be our guide. President Andrew Jackson flatly ignored the Supreme Court's 1832 decision in Worcester v. Georgia, which ruled in favor of Cherokee control over Cherokee territory. Jackson later sent federal troops to forcibly remove the Cherokee people via the infamous Trail of Tears. The rule of law suffers when the political branches ignore the judiciary's judgment.

Breyer worries that today's liberal court packers are going to severely undermine judicial authority and pave the way for the next Andrew Jackson. "Whether particular decisions are right or wrong," Breyer writes, "is not the issue here." The issue "is the general tendency of the public to respect and follow judicial decisions, a habit developed over the course of American history." One of the biggest risks of court packing is that it will reverse that general tendency.

Just imagine what American history would look like without basic political and public support for the Court's decisions, Breyer writes. What "would have happened to all those Americans who espoused unpopular political beliefs, to those who practiced or advocated minority religions, to those who argued for an end to segregation in the South? What would have happened to criminal defendants unable to afford a lawyer, to those whose houses government officials wished to search without probable cause?"

Or take your pick of hot-button modern issues. If the court packers wreck the Court, as Breyer fears that they will, what's to stop an antigay marriage legislature from banning gay marriage, despite the Supreme Court's clear 2015 ruling to the contrary in Obergefell v. Hodges? Is that the future that liberals want?

Breyer's message is clear and convincing: The court packers should be careful what they wish for.

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Stephen Breyer Makes the Liberal Case Against Court Packing - Reason