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Trudeau hiking taxes again in 2024

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Franco Terrazzano

 

Brace for impact, taxpayers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be reaching deeper into your pockets in the new year with payroll tax hikes, a carbon tax hike and alcohol tax hikes.

Canadians will be paying higher payroll taxes because of the mandatory rising Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance contributions.

If you make $73,200 or more, you’ll be paying an extra $347 in payroll taxes in 2024, for a total tax bill of $5,104.

Your employer will also be forced to fork over $5,524 in the new year.

The federal government is imposing a new tax, which it calls “CPP2.” The original CPP taxes your income at six per cent up to $68,500. The new CPP2 expands that threshold and taxes additional income at four per cent up to $73,200.

Trudeau likes to claim he’s “working to make life more affordable.” But he’s also hiking a tax that directly makes life more expensive: the carbon tax.

The carbon tax increases the price of gasoline, diesel and home heating fuels, which is a big deal in our vast, cold country. The carbon tax also makes groceries more expensive, as it increases costs for the farmers who grow our food and the truckers who deliver it.

The carbon tax will cost the average family up to $911 in 2024 even after the rebates, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The feds are also scheming up a digital services tax. This new tax targets social media platforms, companies operating digital marketplaces, and businesses earning revenue from online advertising, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb.

Consumers should expect to pay higher prices because of the tax. When faced with the three per cent DST in France, Amazon increased its commission charge to French vendors by the same amount.

You could be forgiven if all these tax hikes drive you to drink.

But when you pick up that case of Blue, a bottle of pinot or a mickey of rum, Trudeau will be taking an extra 4.7 per cent from you through his alcohol tax hikes.

Next year’s federal alcohol tax hike is expected to cost taxpayers almost $100 million.

Taxes in Canada already account for about half of the price of beer, 65 per cent of the price of wine and more than three quarters of the price of spirits.

While Trudeau hikes taxes, many other countries are providing relief.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation identified 51 national governments that provided tax relief during the pandemic or to ease the burdens of inflation. Those governments include more than half of the G7 and G20 countries and two-thirds of the countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Provincial governments – of all political stripes – are also providing relief.

Manitoba’s NDP government is suspending its fuel tax in the new year. Gas tax relief from Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives will save a family with a minivan and pick-up truck about $185 through June 2024. And the Liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador cut their gas tax by eight cents per litre.

The Alberta government promised to cut personal income taxes and passed legislation requiring a vote before a government can increase income or business taxes. Manitoba’s income tax cuts could save an individual taxpayer more than $2,000. Quebec lowered its income tax rate on the first two brackets. New Brunswick implemented significant income tax relief in 2023. And Prince Edward Island’s income tax cut will save middle-class taxpayers up to $200.

The fastest, simplest and easiest way for Trudeau to make all areas of life more affordable is to ditch his high-tax policies and allow Canadians to keep more of our money.

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Taxpayer watchdog calls Trudeau ‘out of touch’ for prioritizing ‘climate change’ while families struggle

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The prime minister told a G20 panel this week that fighting so-called ‘climate change’ should be more important to families than putting food on the table or paying rent.

Canada’s leading taxpayer watchdog blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for being completely “out of touch” with everyday Canadians after the PM earlier this week suggested his climate “change” policies, including a punitive carbon tax, are more important for families than trying to stay financially afloat.

In speaking to LifeSiteNews, Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) federal director Franco Terrazzano said Trudeau’s recent comments show his government “continues to prove it’s out of touch with its carbon tax.”

“Canadians don’t support the carbon tax because we know it makes life more expensive and it doesn’t help the environment,” Terrazzano told LifeSiteNews.

Terrazzano’s comments come after Trudeau told a G20 panel earlier this week that fighting so-called “climate change” should be more important to families than putting food on the table or paying rent.

Speaking to the panel, Trudeau commented that it is “really, really easy” to “put climate change as a slightly lower priority” when one has “to be able to pay the rent this month” or “buy groceries” for their “kids,” but insisted that “we can’t do that around climate change.”

Terrazzano said that the Trudeau government’s carbon tax in reality “impacts nearly all aspects of life in Canada by making it more expensive to fuel up our cars, heat our homes and buy food.”

“The carbon tax also puts a huge hole in our economy that we can’t afford,” he said to LifeSiteNews, adding that if Trudeau really wanted to help Canadians and “prove it understands the struggles facing Canadians,” then it should “scrap the carbon tax to make life more affordable.”

On Thursday, Trudeau, who is facing abysmal polling numbers, announced he would introduce a temporary pause on the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) for some goods.

Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre this afternoon said about Trudeau’s temporary tax holiday that if he is serious about helping Canadians, he would cut the carbon tax completely.

“What a ridiculous gimmick. Bribing Canadians temporarily with borrowed money,” Bernier wrote.

“When the real solution is to stop growing the bureaucracy, cut wasteful spending, stop sending billions to Ukraine, eliminate subsidies to businesses and activist groups, stop creating new unsustainable and unconstitutional social programs, eliminate the deficit, and THEN, cut taxes for real. None of which he will do of course.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, a survey found that nearly half of Canadians are just $200 away from financial ruin as the costs of housing, food and other necessities has gone up massively since Trudeau took power in 2015.

In addition to the increasing domestic carbon tax, LifeSiteNews reported last week that Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault wants to create a new “global’ carbon tax applied to all goods shipped internationally that could further drive-up prices for families already struggling with inflated costs.

Not only is the carbon tax costing Canadian families hundreds of dollars annually, but Liberals also have admitted that the tax has only reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent.

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UN climate conference—it’s all about money

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From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

This year’s COP wants to fast-track the world’s transition to “clean” energy, help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, work on “mobilizing inclusivity” (whatever that means) and “delivering on climate finance,” which is shorthand for having wealthier developed countries such as Canada transfer massive amounts of wealth to developing countries.

Every year, the United Nations convenes a Conferences of Parties to set the world’s agenda to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It’s the biggest event of the year for the climate industry. This year’s conference (COP29), which ends on Sunday, drew an army of government officials, NGOs, celebrities and journalists (many flying on GHG-emitting jet aircraft) to Baku, Azerbaijan.

The COP follows a similar narrative every year. It opens with a set of ambitious goals for climate policies, followed by days of negotiating as countries jockey to carve out agreements that most favour their goals. In the last two days, they invariably reach a sticking point when it appears the countries might fail to reach agreement. But they burn some midnight oil, some charismatic actors intervene (in the past, this included people such as Al Gore), and with great drama, an agreement is struck in time for the most important event of the year, flying off to their protracted winter holidays.

This year’s COP wants to fast-track the world’s transition to “clean” energy, help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, work on “mobilizing inclusivity” (whatever that means) and “delivering on climate finance,” which is shorthand for having wealthier developed countries such as Canada transfer massive amounts of wealth to developing countries.

Some of these agenda items are actually improvements over previous COPs. For example, they’re actually talking about “climate adaptation”—the unwanted stepchild of climate policies—more this year. But as usual, money remains a number one priority. As reported in the Associated Press, “negotiators are working on a new amount of cash for developing nations to transition to clean energy, adapt to climate change and deal with weather disasters. It’ll replace the current goal of $100 billion (USD) annually—a goal set in 2009.” Moreover, “experts” claim the world needs between $1 trillion and $1.3 trillion (yes, trillion) in “climate finance” annually. Not to be outdone, according to an article in the Euro News, other experts want $9 trillion per year by 2030. Clearly, the global edifice that is climate change activism is all about the money.

Reportedly, COP29 is in its final section of the meta-narrative, with much shouting over getting to a final agreement. One headline in Voice of America reads “Slow progress on climate finance fuels anger as COP29 winds down.” And Argus News says “climate finance talks to halt, parties fail to cut options.” We only await the flying in of this year’s crop of climate megafauna to seal the deal.

This year’s conference in Baku shows more clearly than ever before that the real goal of the global climate cognoscenti is a giant wealth transfer from developed to developing countries. Previous climate conferences, whatever their faults, focused more on setting emission reduction targets and timelines and less about how the UN can extract more money from developed countries. The final conflict of COP29 isn’t about advancing clean energy targets or helping vulnerable countries adapt to climate change technologically, it’s all about show me the money.

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