After more than nine years in power and lifting more than two million people out of poverty, Justin Trudeau has decided that it’s time to thank Canadian taxpayers.
The Liberals have proposed a two-month break from the federal sales tax on prepared foods, restaurant meals, snacks, beer, wine, kids’ clothes, diapers, toys and books; as well as a one-time $250 rebate for anybody who worked in 2023 and made less than $150,000.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, who has advocated for removing the federal sales tax on daily essentials, responded by saying, “You know what’s cruel? That $250 cheque that’s going out in spring — this Liberal government is excluding seniors, people living with disabilities, and people who just started working. What a slap in the face!”
And Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who has advocated for temporary tax breaks, called the proposal “a tiny tax trick.”
Poilievre opposing Trudeau should surprise no one — that’s kind of his thing. But Singh’s opposition doesn’t even make sense.
Seniors, disabled people and people who “just started working” wouldn’t be excluded from the rebate – only those who didn’t work in 2023 would. And more than one million seniors and nearly half of adults with disabilities worked.
Singh’s opposition to the one-time rebate for workers, if not the two-month tax break for everybody, is ostensibly about fairness. But it’s based on the belief that people who make $150,000 are rich – and that rich people don’t deserve to get $250 back from the government.
Yes, if those people have no dependents and have paid off their home, then they probably haven’t been hurting financially. But then again, those people would have paid more than $40,000 in personal income tax last year — not to mention all the other taxes they paid.
And those people wouldn’t have benefited from many of the programs they paid for: the child benefit; the young child supplement; the child with a disability supplement; subsidized daycare; the lowered retirement age; the increased income supplement for seniors; and the increased Old Age Security benefit for older seniors.
And those are just Trudeau’s signature programs. The taxes those people paid also helped fund Canada’s public education, healthcare, and plenty of other services that those people didn’t use or wouldn’t qualify for.
To be clear: These government programs are what make Canada good — not just because we can provide them to people who can’t afford it; but because we actually do.
Or at least that’s something Canadian progressives used to believe. I don’t know when that changed – but it must have been before they decided to oppose a one-time $250 “thank you” to the Canadians who pay for Canada.
Progressives like Singh aren’t just being silly and self-righteous; they’re also being seriously self-destructive. They’re the reason why Poilievre is poised to win a massive majority in the next federal election – because, until now, the Conservatives have been the only party that seemed to get that middle-class Canadians have gotten poorer – and that it’s unrealistic to expect them to be cool with that simply due to the fact that there are other people who are struggling more.
Canadian progressives should be relieved that the federal government has finally recognized the reality that middle-class workers have been living for years. Instead, they’re calling a $250 tax rebate “cruel.” Because they would rather that Poilievre win than work with Trudeau. Even though they know that the Conservatives would cut the government programs that help the people they claim to care about.
Tell me, how is this progress?