HoC Speech- February 25 2020 – Liberal plan on basic personal amount

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the NDP motion regarding the Liberal plan to increase the basic personal amount from $12,298 to $15,000. Turning to the motion before the House and the issue of increasing the basic personal amount to $15,000 from $12,298, let me say that this is nothing more than a Liberal middle-class tax gimmick. This is a government that talks a good game about the middle class. Indeed, the Prime Minister even appointed a minister responsible for middle class prosperity to demonstrate the Prime Minister’s apparent concern for middle-class Canadians, how caring he is and always from the heart out.

It is certainly interesting that, when the minister appeared before the finance committee, she was unable to explain her mandate. She was asked by my colleague, the member for Edmonton Centre and again today in the House to define what constitutes a middle-class Canadian. She could not answer the question. However, I digress, because the fact is, despite all of the talk, what matters is not words but action, and the actions of the government time and again are to make life less affordable for middle-class Canadians.

For a government that is so preoccupied with the middle class, it sure has a strange way of showing it. This, after all, is a government that scrapped tax credits that benefited middle-class Canadians. This is a government that scrapped the children’s fitness tax credit, the children’s arts tax credit, the student textbook tax credit, the public transit tax credit and I could go on.

However, not to be outdone, the government decided to jack up CPP, taking $2,200 out of the wallets of the average middle-class Canadian family. This is some way of showing its love for the middle class, nickel-and-diming them and taking money out of their wallets. Of course, there is the massive tax on everything, the carbon tax, which as my friend, the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley noted just yesterday the Alberta Court of Appeal determined to be a “constitutional Trojan horse”. Nonetheless, the government is adamant about imposing a massive tax on middle-class Canadians. The government would say, “Don’t worry, be happy, we delivered a middle-class tax cut”.