Business
Federal tax policy in 2025 will not be kind to Canadians
From the Fraser Institute
By Matthew Lau
Federal tax policy was not kind to Canadians in 2024, and that shouldn’t be a surprise. It wasn’t kind to Canadians in 2023, 2022 or any year since 2016 when the Trudeau government established a new income tax bracket of 33 per cent, pushing the combined federal and provincial top tax rate over 50 per cent in many provinces.
To recap 2024 tax policy changes, the federal government began the year with its sixth consecutive Canada Pension Plan tax hike. In 2018, before the government’s CPP “enhancements” (to use the government’s phrase), for a worker earning $85,000, the combined employer and employee CPP tax was $5,188. In 2024 the same worker’s tax bill was $8,111—or about 56 per cent higher including the government’s new “CPP2” tax.
Unfortunately, things will only get worse for Canadians in 2025. The CPP tax bill for the Canadian earning $85,000 will rise to $8,860 in 2025, bringing the total nominal tax increase to 71 per cent through the government’s seven annual CPP “enhancements.”
In addition to making the CPP tax more expensive yearly, the federal government also has been increasing the carbon tax each year. In April 2024, the Trudeau government increased the carbon tax to $80 per tonne from $65 per tonne, and like the CPP tax, the carbon tax will become more expensive yet again in 2025, rising another $15 per tonne to $95.
Another big tax change in 2024 was the capital gains tax hike announced in June. The Trudeau government claimed it was increasing taxes only on “0.13 per cent of Canadians in any given year”—a statistic that’s both misleading and incomplete. First, 0.13 per cent of Canadians “in any given year” are a different group than the 0.13 per cent of Canadians in the previous or following years, so many more than 0.13 per cent of Canadians will directly pay the tax.
Second, the tax hike also affects corporations, of which millions of Canadians are owners or part-owners (even excluding their ownership of publicly traded companies’ shares). Overall, economist Jack Mintz estimated that through their ownership of private corporations (based on 2021 data) about 4.74 million Canadians would be affected by the higher tax rate, or 15.8 per cent of tax filers. In other words, about 100 times more Canadians than the Trudeau government suggested.
And in reality, just about all Canadians will be made worse off by the tax hike because almost everyone will effectively be subject to the higher capital gains tax rate through their exposure to publicly traded corporations including through public pension plans.
Worse, because capital gains taxes are taxes on investment, the certain effect of the tax hike will be to reduce business investment. Unfortunately as multiple economic analyses have shown, business investment in Canada has already been extremely weak in the past decade, falling further behind the United States and other developed economies, and contributing to Canada’s productivity and economic stagnation crisis. The capital gains tax hike will make this even worse.
Finally, the Trudeau government ended 2024 with a so-called sales tax “holiday” for two months, which imposes severe administrative and logistical nightmares onto business owners (in a survey of small businesses, most opposed the change and 75 per cent said it would be costly and complicated to implement), and will do nothing to increase productivity or improve economic incentives.
Quite the opposite; government deficits fund the tax “holiday,” which will increase the future tax burden—something that will further reduce economic productivity in the future. Federal tax policy clearly was not kind to Canadians in 2024. Unfortunately, 2025 is looking no better.
Business
Liberals, globalists flip out after Trump orders USAID freeze
From LifeSiteNews
By Stephen Kokx
The foreign aid agency USAID has morphed into a slush fund for the Deep State to spread wokeism and to spark revolutions in countries that resist its tyrannical decrees. President Trump has had enough of this, and his administration is moving to dismantle the program.
How many Americans even knew what USAID was until this week? I’m guessing less than one percent.
For the uninformed: USAID was started by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Officially named the United States Agency for International Development, it spends over $40 billion in taxpayer dollars every year on various initiatives overseas; most of which are a complete waste of money, as Elon Musk and others have pointed out in recent days. See here:
Whatever good intentions Kennedy may have had for the program, it has morphed into a slush fund for the Deep State to spread wokeism and to spark revolutions in countries that resist its tyrannical decrees. All of this is done in the name of “defending democracy” mind you.
Under Joe Biden, USAID was run by World Economic Forum functionary Samantha Powers, who weaponized the agency to funnel boatloads of cash to Ukraine, among other futile projects.
That fact was pointed out by Balázs Orbán, the son of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, on X this week.
A CIA front group that promotes LGBT ideology overseas
President Trump has had enough of this. In his continued effort to drain the swamp, he signed an executive order empowering the newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency to dismantle USAID.
“I love the concept, but they turned out to be radical left lunatics,” he said about the agency in the Oval Office on Monday.
USAID’s website has already been shut down, and many of its liberal employees have been fired or barred from entering its headquarters in D.C., causing Democrats to hold a rally outside of it; because nothing shows the American people that you care about them more than defending a program designed to spend their money in foreign lands. Talk about being out of touch.
Oddly enough, left-wing Jesuit priest James Martin also defended the agency by claiming that Jesus would support it as well. He was rightly called out by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on X.
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been named USAID’s interim director. He told the media this week that its rogue behavior has come to an end.
“USAID has a history of ignoring [the national interest of the United States] and deciding that they’re a global charity. These are not donor dollars, these are taxpayer dollars,” he said.
Other lawmakers and mainstream pundits have jumped on the bandwagon as well.
“To my friends who are upset, call somebody who cares. You better get used to this. It’s USAID today, it’s gonna be Department of Education tomorrow,” GOP Senator John Kennedy said.
“It’s not foreign aid — it’s a foreign slush fund,” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham has argued, as has Glenn Beck.
Trump’s “Rapid Response” X account joined in on the fun by highlighting some of the many ways the agency has wasted your and my money on LGBT and DEI causes abroad.
Democrats melt down as Trump takes aim
Liberals have been unable to control themselves. News that fewer tax dollars will be spent promoting their woke religion has left them apoplectic.
This is a “coup,” thundered an emotional Joy Reid on MSNBC.
Fellow MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki ludicrously claimed that the agency helps with “humanitarian” causes and “works to combat corruption.”
Van Jones said on CNN the rolling back of funding is Trump telling the world to “go die.”
Total nonsense.
Like Freemasonry, USAID may feed the poor and help some impoverished people, but that is just cover to hide its true aim, which is to sow discord in countries that reject the NATO and U.S. empire.
USAID has done this for decades, primarily by funding non-governmental organizations (and even extremists) that cause headaches for leaders who refuse to be slaves to the West. This has been the case in the nation of Georgia over the past several years. See here:
CNN’s Scott Jennings, a Republican, made a comment about how USAID has been appropriated by liberals that really hits the nail on the head with what has gone wrong with it.
“There is a difference between soft power and soft stupidity. So whether you’re funding DEI musicals in some country or transgender surgery somewhere or whatever, that is not what most Americans would say is an effective part of U.S. foreign policy.”
USAID funded the Wuhan lab in China
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing headline that has emerged with the USAID story is the revelation that the agency funneled $40 million to a lab in Wuhan, China, to study bat coronaviruses.
“Records prove that Ben Hu — COVID’s likely ‘Patient Zero’ — is a Wuhan white coat funded directly by Fauci, NIT & USAID to conduct dangerous coronavirus gain of function experiments on animals!” watchdog group White Coat Waste Project posted on X today.
Fauci has long denied being involved in such measures, but GOP Senator Ran Paul has never backed down from disputing his claims. He likewise challenged Samantha Powers about USAID money going to Wuhan as well.
Last week, Paul announced his intention to continue digging into the matter, given Biden’s preemptive pardoning of Fauci.
Today, Paul re-shared an X post from political activist Matt Kibbe that suggested he is on the cusp of blowing the whole thing wide open.
“NIAID and USAID were money-laundering puppets for agencies prohibited from doing dangerous gain-of-function bioterrorism research. Now, Rand Paul and Elon Musk are poised to expose the whole scheme,” Kibbe said.
USAID has misspent taxpayer money in countless other ways as well. Many of the downright bizarre programs are being shared on X. Here are a few of them:
It should be noted that Rand Paul’s father, former Congressman Ron Paul, has been a critic of the Deep State for decades. In a recent video message, he called on the government to audit USAID and then shut it down. Elon Musk re-shared the video, calling it an “interesting” proposal.
That’s good advice. I hope Elon and Trump will take it and follow through on it. Ending USAID is long overdue.
Business
Trudeau Liberals pledge $41.5 million for over 100 pro-2SLGBTQI+ projects
From LifeSiteNews
Leader of the People’s Party of Canada Maxime Bernier blasted the funding, noting how spending money while the country is in a “major economic crisis” shows how “Liberal nutcases” are “wasting” taxpayer money on “woke activists.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is using its final days to promise $41.5 million in taxpayer funds to advance 106 pro-LGBT projects “across Canada.”
On January 31, Lisa Hepfner, Trudeau’s Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, announced “$41.5 million for 106 projects across four different 2SLGBTQI+ funds.”
Today I joined my colleague @s_guilbeault in Montreal to announce a fed investment of $41.5 million for 106 projects to advance equality for 2SLGBTQI+ communities across 🇨🇦 Including $8m for 10 projects aimed at combatting hate and $33.5m to fund 96 projects to address key issues pic.twitter.com/eqrifcTFIg
— Lisa Hepfner (@lisahepfner) January 31, 2025
“This funding will advance equality for 2SLGBTQI+ communities across Canada and address the rise in hate,” claimed the government in a press release.
The government said the money will help “build and sustain resilience of 2SLGBTQI+ communities against hate and discrimination,” with the funds coming as part of Canada’s Action Plan on Combatting Hate, which was launched in the fall of 2024, and follows Trudeau’s Federal 2SLGBTQI+ Action Plan, which is in its third year of operation.
Leader of the People’s Party of Canada Maxime Bernier blasted the funding, noting how spending money while the country is in a “major economic crisis” shows how “Liberal nutcases” are “wasting” taxpayer money on “woke activists.”
“As Canada is on the verge of a major economic crisis, these Liberal nutcases are wasting another $41M on woke activists and mentally ill people who identify as one of the 52 genders. Unbelievable,” wrote Bernier on X Saturday in response to Hepfner’s X post about the funding.
As reported by investigative blogger Pat Maloney, Canada spent $108,594,964 on LGBT ideology in 2022, a number that swelled to a whopping $665,454,357 in 2023.
Maloney reported that in 2024 Canada gave LGBT activists a total of $6,469,076 — an increase from the previous three years, in which a total of $12,548,238 was spent.
Since taking office in 2015, the Trudeau government has consistently pushed an anti-life, anti-family narrative on Canadians.
In addition to supporting effectively unlimited abortion, Trudeau and his government have stood behind even the most extreme aspects of gender ideology, such as the chemical and surgical “transition” of minors.
Trudeau announced in early January that he plans to step down as Liberal Party leader once a new leader has been chosen, which is set to take place on March 9. Parliament has been prorogued until March 24 as a result, although Trudeau could resume it at any time.
Thus far, the two main candidates in the running to replace Trudeau are former central banker Mark Carney and Trudeau’s former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
-
espionage1 day ago
Canadian commission confirms ‘threat of foreign interference’ in elections is ‘real’
-
Banks1 day ago
The Great Exodus from the Net Zero Banking Alliance has arrived
-
armed forces2 days ago
Canada could cut deal with U.S.—increase defence spending, remove tariffs
-
Business2 days ago
A Lone Federal Political Voice Opposing Retaliatory Tariffs
-
Bruce Dowbiggin1 day ago
The Limping Loonie: Are Canada’s Pro Sports Team In Trouble Again?
-
Business2 days ago
Poilievre Says Both Sides Lose Trade Wars, Promotes Inter-Provincial Trade
-
Business1 day ago
Canada reaches last minute deal to delay Trump Tariffs
-
Business1 day ago
Trudeau Promises ‘Fentanyl Czar’ and US-Canada Organized Crime Strike Force To Avert U.S. Tariffs