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A federal tax-reform plan will not be concluded in time for Finance Minister Bill Morneaus 2017 budget as the Liberal government waits to see how promised tax changes in the United States will affect Canada.

During the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals pledged to raise $3-billion in new revenue by eliminating tax breaks that primarily benefit wealthy Canadians or are ineffective.

March 22 federal budget will focus on job growth: Morneau (The Canadian Press)

Mr. Morneau had intended the budget to reflect the final results of a review of all tax credits, but sources say the process will extend beyond that date. The budget, to be delivered on March 22, is likely to eliminate some tax credits and will also focus on skills training in response to rapid changes in the work force.

Read more: To paint a portrait of the Liberals federal budget, Morneau will have to get crafty

Our budget will be very much about trying to increase jobs in this country, to create opportunities for people today, for their children and for their grandchildren, Mr. Morneau said. It will be about how we can help Canadians get the skills that they need in a dynamic and changing economy. Mr. Morneau has little room for new spending, so his budget is not expected to include a major change in direction. It will provide new detail on existing government plans for infrastructure spending, innovation and research in addition to the review of tax credits. Business groups had argued that the more complex aspects of the tax reforms would need more debate and consultation beyond the budget date.

Tax credits are worth more than $100-billion a year in forgone federal revenue. They cover everything from tax breaks for apprentice vehicle mechanics buying tools to deductions related to investments such as stock options or the sale of a primary residence.

Extending the tax review would allow the government time to see how U.S. President Donald Trump implements his pledges of major tax reform and factor that in to its own plans. Business groups say Canada could be at a disadvantage when it comes to retaining companies and highly skilled workers if the United States sharply reduces personal and business tax rates.

Sources say the budgets focus on skills will be part of a longer-term approach to the economy as the ratio of working-age Canadians to retirees shrinks. Measures to encourage specific groups including aboriginals, low-income people and women with young children to boost their participation in the work force will be a central theme.

Well be thinking about not only how we can grow the economy, but how we can ensure that Canadians are prepared for the exciting and good opportunities that will come out not only for this generation, but for the next generation as well, Mr. Morneau told reporters after announcing the budget date in the House of Commons.

Conservative finance critic Grard Deltell said he hopes the government shelves the tax credit review in light of the changes in the United States.

If the Trump administration tables some new direction to have less fees and less tax for business, well, we must address it because its very serious, Mr. Deltell said. America, as you know, is our most important partner, but also our most important competitor.

The Conservatives also want a more ambitious timeline for erasing the deficit. A finance department report recently said the budget will not be balanced until the 2050s.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said the Liberals should follow through on closing tax loopholes for the rich and deliver on their promises to Indigenous people.

Mr. Morneaus advisory council on economic growth which worked directly with the Finance Minister and his team over the past year called for an increased focus on skills training in a February report.

The Liberal government was elected on a central plank of running deficits to boost economic growth through infrastructure spending, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer and a Senate committee say the money has been slow to get out the door.

The 2017 budget is expected to provide more detailed breakdowns of the long-term spending plan for infrastructure. The numbers are not likely to change much from what Mr. Morneau outlined in his Nov. 1 fiscal update, which increased the total to $186.7-billion over 12 years.

While some new projects are expected to be highlighted in the budget as examples of what is to come, funding announcements on big projects will have to wait. Ottawa has not formally launched its second phase of funding for large projects, which means provinces have not submitted wish lists.

Mr. Morneaus Nov. 1 update added trade and transportation as well as rural and northern communities to the three categories public transit, green infrastructure and social infrastructure on which the Liberals have promised to focus.

One senior government official said the budget will have more to say on federal efforts to promote trade infrastructure.

John Gamble, president and CEO of the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies Canada, said his members are not seeing evidence of increased construction in spite of promises from the Liberals and the Conservatives before them to hike infrastructure spending.

Were very excited and very supportive of the fact that weve seen three successive budgets, from two governments, and each one of them has legitimately claimed to be the largest infrastructure investment in Canadian history, he said. However, in practical terms, we have just not seen the corresponding level of design activity so far. We know there are a lot of reasons. Were just trying to convey a sense of urgency.

With a report from Robert Fife

Follow Bill Curry on Twitter: @curryb

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Liberals extend tax credit review beyond 2017 federal budget, keeping an eye on Trump - The Globe and Mail

Updated March 08, 2017 15:59:12

Two months ago, when the bookmakers had Labor as a strong favourite to end the Government's eight-and-a-half-year stint in office, Premier Colin Barnett encouraged punters to put their money where his mouth was.

"I'd put some money on the Liberal Party if I was you," Mr Barnett said at the time, insisting he was not worried by odds implying punters gave his Government little chance.

But the picture, at least according to the betting markets, has only grown bleaker for the Liberals as election day draws closer.

Two months ago, WA Labor had just an 8 per cent chance of defeating Corrective Services Minister Joe Francis in the safe Liberal seat of Jandakot, at least according to one bookmaker's odds.

Now, on the eve of Saturday's election, that same bookmaker has the two major parties neck and neck in what had been considered one of the Liberals' safest seats.

It is a similar story in Darling Range, where Labor was given just a 16 per cent chance in the same betting market two months ago, but it is now level with the Liberals in that bookmaker's eyes.

The Liberals' chance of holding onto Bunbury has fallen from 35 per cent to 7 per cent in the same time period, according to that same bookmaker.

A dramatic shift towards Labor has also been seen in the Liberal-held seat of Southern River - where the betting market implies the Opposition is now almost a 70 per cent chance of winning the seat from Peter Abetz, up from 25 per cent in January.

The bookies have Labor a strong favourite in Local Government Minister Paul Miles' seat of Wanneroo, while the market also suggests fellow Cabinet members John Day and Albert Jacob are in trouble in Kalamunda and Burns Beach respectively.

Although the odds suggest growing concern in particular seats for the Liberals, the overall market has only shifted slightly in the past two months.

In January, an aggregate of the odds of multiple bookmakers implied Labor had a 72 per cent chance of winning the election while the Government was at 28 per cent.

Labor's probability of winning, according to the odds, has only improved slightly since then to 75.98 per cent.

The odds also suggest One Nation's chance of holding significant influence in the next Parliament has improved.

One bookmaker's odds suggested One Nation's chance of winning at least one Upper House seat is above 95 per cent.

Topics: elections, political-parties, gambling, wa

First posted March 08, 2017 14:24:48

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WA election: Bookies tip bleak outlook for Liberals as odds of Labor government increase - ABC Online

Chadwick Moore, a gay conservative writer who has written for Out, The New York Times and The New York Post, said liberals have created histrionic, myopic narratives about a nefarious Trump administration that dont comport with reality. People on the left are really truly convinced that there is some sort of fascist element in power right now, he said.

I think theres just such little understanding. I do believe that most rank-and-file lefties, most comrades, are really truly convinced that there is some sort of fascist element in power right now,

And I do think theyre fighting for peoples lives. Its the just the level of misinformation and misunderstanding and the lack of inquisitiveness of wanting to learn more, its so much easier to be emotional and to react, rather than to learn, Moore said in a Salon Talks interview. Most people dont ever leave their politics that they sort of develop when theyre starting to think about these sort of things. And to do it really takes reason and thinking and criticizing and looking at whats going on. That happens less and less these days, it seems.

An Illinois native who came out at age 15, Mooresaid theremany similarities between coming out in past generations and announcing conservative leanings today, particularly in a deeply liberal place like New York City.

You know when I came out as gay, I suddenly had this whole support network, he said. Of course, the liberals come to you and all these new friends and it sort of becomes this political issue. I got all new friends and it was just a really wonderful, lovely experience. Coming out as conservative has been both that, but initially it was scary because you know, much like being gay 50 years ago, you face employment discrimination if you come out as a Trump supporter, you lose friends and family members, people get angry with you. Politics are so violent at the moment. So that was really, really scary, and I wasnt sure what was going to happen to me when I decided to make this announcement.

Moore talked about how the conservative community welcomed him. He also mentioned that he sees conservatives as inclusive and tolerant.

[S]imilar to coming out gay, Ive had this whole new world thats opened up to me, all these wonderful people coming forward. Also that same sense of newness and excitement for things that are ahead, Moore said. And not all conservative are going to agree with me on this, but the way I see it, I like the term conservative as this umbrella term for essentially a very diverse coalition of political thought: the religious right, the Tea Party and the establishment republicans, and libertarians and classical liberals.

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Gay conservative: Liberals are misguided in thinking there's some sort of fascist element in power - Salon

If you like Modi so much, why dont you go, sleep with Modi? The first time someone asked me this question was in 2013 when I had just started writing on Facebook about my political beliefs. I was engaged in a fierce debate about Narendra Modi with a few people when this question landed in my comment box.

Thirteen words that changed my world view forever!

I was shocked not so much by the viciousness and venom of the question, but by the identity of the person who asked it. He was a mild-looking 65-year-old man with a flowing white beard. Almost Tagore-like in his looks, he was a self-professed Marxist who claimed to publish a dubious rag called Civil Society! Apparently, his idea of civil society allowed him to throw sexual slurs at a woman he did not even know personally.

It was my first brush with the intolerance of the liberals! Since then, I have been abused, threatened and ridiculed by people who call themselves liberals thousands of times. There are parody pages dedicated to me. Fake profiles are created in my name, and my photographs are morphed and circulated as Facebook and Twitter memes.

All in the name of liberalism, feminism and freedom of expression.

Once I had written about the feminist ploy of generalisation, of demonising all Indian men each time there is an incident of crime against women in India. I was told by someone who called herself a feminist to go back into the kitchen and stay there. Women like you dont deserve the right to speak, she announced rather grandly. This was not the first time I had faced ridicule from self-professed feminists. A supposedly liberal writer had once condescendingly called me a mediocre housewife turned columnist when he couldnt argue cogently about something that I had written.

Apparently, irony as a concept is unfamiliar to some Facebook feminists!

I refuse to label myself as a feminist, only because, at least in India these days, the term is being thrown about very casually. It has come to mean a rabid, blinding hatred of men. But that does not mean I condone gender discrimination.

I am appalled when I see rape threats and sexual slurs being bandied about by some people to silence the voice of women, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they choose to be on. As a woman who has been viciously attacked both in virtual as well as real life for daring to speak up, I can never be on the side of sexism and gender discrimination.

As a child raised by a freedom-fighter and a strong mother, I was always encouraged to speak up, to voice my opinions, to say what I think is right, rather than parrot a narrative that is 'au courant'. I grew up with a deep love for India ingrained in me. I had heard many stories about that tumultuous decade in my fathers life when he was an armed revolutionary fighting for Goas freedom from the Portuguese.

At 21, my father was declared the Most Wanted Rebel by the Portuguese regime for daring to lead a successful raid on a Portuguese armoury. I had seen the scars on my grand-uncles back, mementoes of the time when he was arrested, beaten and tortured by the Portuguese police because they wanted him to reveal information about my father. I had heard first hand, stories about how my father and his colleagues were chased for over eight hours by a Portuguese armoured van mounted with an automatic gun and how they walked 30 km on foot on an empty stomach through the night in a daring escape.

I inherited my love for India and my respect for the armed forces from my father. It was only when I joined the mass communication department of Pune University, to pursue my master's degree, that I realised that patriotism was a bad word in the liberal dictionary. Whenever I spoke in class about India and nationalism, there were voices dismissing it as rubbish sentimentalism.

Humanities students were not supposed to be such bigoted chest-thumping rabid hyper-nationalists, they said. When we were shown Anand Patwardhans movie Ram ke Naam in class, we were supposed to display the requisite feelings of revulsion and horror at the conduct of Hindu nationalists. When some of us felt that the movie was a poorly researched, very biased, one-sided narrative, we were not allowed to voice that thought.

In the brave new world of journalism, patriotism was pass!

After graduating from the University, I started my career in entertainment television, moved on to editing websites, writing freelance for newspapers on varied subjects like culture, travel, education and leisure. I steered clear of politics, for what I saw, sickened me. The convenient one-sided narrative that was being peddled by mainstream media as the only truth led me to question the credibility of mainstream media.

And then, something wonderful happened. The remarkable phenomenon called 'social media'. For the first time, people like me had found a medium to voice our opinions, without any filters, censorship or editorial interference. The average Indian citizen was no longer a passive consumer of news as defined by mainstream media, but she could be an active contributor.

I started writing political blogs from my Facebook page. The first post that went viral was written in January 2013, when Rahul Gandhi was elevated to the vice president of the Congress party. Suddenly, my opinion had gone mainstream without needing the crutches of conventional media, and there were a lot of people out there who agreed with my point of view.

Since then, it has been quite a journey. It has been incredibly rewarding to have complete strangers reach out to tell me that they too are sick of mainstream media demonising the concepts of nationalism, patriotism and love for India. I have had readers approach me in places as far flung as Darjeeling, Sikkim, Kinnaur or Kanchi to tell me that I am voicing their opinion. Luckily, I have an extremely supportive husband and extended family that has helped me remain strong in the face of abuse and personal threats.

I think it was Martin Luther King Jr. who had said, Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

I am glad I chose to live!

Continued here:
How I Learnt That Liberals In India Are Not Really Liberal - Swarajya

Both of British Columbias major political parties are scrambling to stay ahead of an Elections B.C. probe into potential fundraising contraventions, promising to return any donations that are found to have violated the provinces sparse campaign finance regulations.

The New Democrats are contacting donors this week, including lobbyists and union representatives, who have made contributions in their own name but may have been reimbursed by a corporation or other organization, a violation of B.C.s elections law.

We have been very pro-active, but we have identified four cases that require clarification, so we are in the process of contacting the individuals involved, said Glen Sanford, the deputy director of the B.C. New Democratic Party. If there were any errors, well be contacting Elections B.C.

The internal review of donations over the past three years is continuing, but so far the value of the donations that have been flagged totals about $10,000, he said.

In a statement, a spokesman for the B.C. Liberals said the party is reviewing its donations after a Globe and Mail investigation revealed it collected tens of thousands of dollars in multiple donations from lobbyists who paid under their own names with personal credit cards on behalf of clients and companies and were reimbursed, which is against the law.

We are currently working to review and remedy issues raised this weekend by The Globe and Mail, Emile Scheffel said in a statement on Tuesday. We will not be commenting further until this work is complete.

In Question Period on Tuesday, NDP Leader John Horgan urged the government to ensure that Elections B.C. has the financial resources to complete its investigation into the shady fundraising practices of the B.C. Liberal Party before the May 9 provincial election.

We have media revelations over the past weekend that the B.C. Liberals are taking money from lobbyists in an illegal manner. The elections office is looking at it. We are at the busiest time in the four-year cycle for Elections B.C., Mr. Horgan said. They will not possibly have the resources to do a thorough investigation into the shady practices that were outlined in The Globe and Mail over the weekend.

Finance Minister Mike de Jong said he is confident Elections B.C. has the resources for the wide-ranging review that is taking place [that] will examine many aspects of fundraising. He mocked the NDP for sanctimony, noting it is also aggressively seeking donations under the existing rules while demanding reform.

Justice Minister Suzanne Anton, who is responsible for both the Election Act and the Registrar of Lobbyists, told the House she expects lobbyists to follow the rules, but said her party will pay back any donations that violated the law. Theres certainly a commitment from my side of the House and from the party involved, the B.C. Liberals, that if there are donations which are given improperly, they will be returned.

The NDP has not voluntarily disclosed its donors from 2016 as the Liberals have, but the party will turn over the details to Elections B.C. this month as required, which will show it collected about $6.2-million last year from individuals, corporations and organized labour. That is half of the amount the governing Liberals raised.

Andrew Watson of Elections B.C. confirmed the agency is looking at potential contraventions of the Elections Act not limited to the Liberals.

Its not party-based, he said. It is a matter of potential contravention of the act. Its a matter we take seriously and we are putting resources into it. Mr. Watson could not say if the probe would be completed before the spring election.

B.C. has been criticized for its almost unfettered campaign finance system, but it does prohibit indirect contributions. A political party that identifies such donations is required to return the money and recover and void any income tax receipt it issued.

The governing Liberals have been criticized over the past year for fundraising tactics that include lucrative cash-for-access events such as small, private dinners with Premier Christy Clark for $10,000 a plate or more.

A year ago, the Premier promised to introduce a bill that would provide up-to-date reports on campaign contributions, but so far that law has not been introduced. As of Wednesday, likely no more than six days are left in the legislative session before this springs election campaign begins, making the passage of such a law before the election unlikely.

Follow Justine Hunter on Twitter: @justine_hunter

Read more from the original source:
As Elections BC investigates, NDP reviews fundraising while Liberals look to 'remedy' issues - The Globe and Mail