Madam Speaker, the government's reckless spending and mismanagement of the national economy are causing inflation. Now, on top of that, it wants to tax this inflation.

This is how it works. Somebody buys a capital property, say, a commercial warehouse for their business, and over time, the value goes up. When they sell that property, that capital asset, there is a tax to pay on that capital gain, and so it is really a tax on inflation. It has always been deemed to be unfair, but Canada made the compromise by saying, “Well, we will put only half that capital gain into a person's income and then tax it at their marginal tax rate.” Is it fair? No, but it has been accepted.

The current government, on account of its incompetence, does not even know how to balance the budget in good times, in times of full employment, as in the first four years of the Liberals' administration, from 2015 to 2019. The economy was good, there were good government revenues and low interest rates, but even then, it could not balance the budget. The Liberals were lulled into a sense of complacency because of low interest rates, and it was spending till the cows came home. Well, eventually the cows did come home, in March 2020 with the pandemic, and all hell broke loose. There was deficit spending, borrowing, quantitative easing like we have never seen before in Canadian history and, very predictably, inflation followed. There were too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. The law of supply and demand, like the law of gravity, never changes.

The middle class, whom this government had promised to help, has suffered on account of this inflation. We can look at the cost of housing, groceries and transportation. What does the socialist government do? It attacks the wealthy, of course, which is what the Liberals always like to do. The Minister of Finance introduced a capital gains tax increase, said the Liberals were asking the wealthiest 0.13% to pay just a bit more. Now many Canadians are finding out, to their surprise, that they are part of this elite group of Canada's wealthiest.

Hard-working Karen in my riding runs her retail store very successfully. She bought her own commercial strata unit to save for her retirement. If she sells it for half a million dollars more than she bought it for, and in these inflationary times that is completely realistic, with the new rules, the capital gains inclusion rules, her tax bill will be $40,000 higher than it would have been under the old rules in Canada for many years.

Will the Liberals keep their promise, keep the Minister of Finance's promise, that only the top 0.13% of income earners will be taxed, and will they leave ordinary, hard-working entrepreneurs like Karen alone?

Tako Van Popta

$567,618.00