The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - September 07, 2017


Conservative Shadow Finance Minister blasts Trudeau’s tax hikes

Topics
tax on small business savings
Hosted by
Jamie Schmal
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Pierre Poilievre Bill Morneau Tony Kremend Shadow Cabinet Tony Clement Speaker Exert
Justin Trudeau’s payout to a terrorist Andrew Scheer launches the Supporting New Parents Act

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

152.52

Word count

1,626

Sentence count

95

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Justin Trudeau wants to raise taxes on small business savings to 73%. What does that mean for farmers, small business owners, and small business families across the country? In this episode, Conservative MP Pierre Pouvreau talks about the impact of Trudeau's proposed 73% tax on savings.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:08.960 Well, they thought they were going to have an easy day over there today, but not so fast, Mr. Speaker.
00:00:16.600 What is it going to take for the Prime Minister to have any respect for any laws in this country that may curb his out-of-control behaviour?
00:00:25.320 And now, here's your host, Tony Kremend.
00:00:31.140 My next guest is Pierre Polyev, who is, of course, our new Finance Shadow Minister.
00:00:38.500 Congratulations again for that awesome responsibility as part of our team.
00:00:42.940 Thank you very much, Tony. Good to be with you today.
00:00:45.080 Now, let's get right to the meat and potatoes, because this is an issue that I'm sure none of us thought we'd have to be dealing with throughout the summer months, and it's going to cascade into the fall.
00:00:57.120 But whenever you have a Liberal government, my observation after 40 years of volunteer and elected politics is, sooner or later, they start to tax people more.
00:01:06.100 And despite all their rhetoric about how they are for the middle class and they want to give people breaks, we're now seeing the other face of liberal – Canadian liberalism, which is taxing people who are trying to make a living.
00:01:22.040 So, Pierre, why don't you walk us through these tax proposals that the Liberals are shopping around, and, in fact, go to Justin Trudeau's reaction when there was a little bit of pressure on him, how he doubled down on some of these things.
00:01:36.720 I give you the floor, sir.
00:01:38.360 Thank you very much, Tony. Great to be with you today, and congratulations on your role in our Shadow Cabinet as well.
00:01:45.140 Well, Justin Trudeau sent his finance minister out in the middle of the summer to announce a discussion paper along with drafted legislation that would raise taxes on small business savings to 73%.
00:02:01.340 Now, I'll tell you, explain to you how they're proposing to do this.
00:02:06.600 Small businesses typically save for the retirement of their owners within the company.
00:02:13.700 RRSPs often don't work very well if you're a farmer or a small business person because you need to pull that money out.
00:02:20.840 If you're a farmer and there's a drought or your barn burns down or you have a major mechanical problem or a family member dies and you lose – you're one of your most valuable workers, you might need to pull that money out very suddenly.
00:02:34.660 And, of course, RRSPs bring big penalties when you do that.
00:02:37.940 So they save for the retirement within the company, and then later on they draw that money out as needed.
00:02:44.000 What Justin Trudeau is proposing to do is tax the income on those savings twice – once when the original income is earned and then once when it is withdrawn from the company and put in the hands of the small business owner.
00:03:01.680 And that's how you get this 73% tax on small businesses who are trying to save for their future.
00:03:08.220 This will be devastating for our farmers, for small business operators right across the country.
00:03:17.260 And it will mean a much higher tax bill for them than anyone else pays.
00:03:23.300 Now, they claim that it's about leveling the playing field.
00:03:26.920 Well, this is the other thing, too, because when this was rolled out, Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau, the finance minister, were saying, no, we're going after the 1%.
00:03:35.980 But what you're saying is you're talking about small business owners.
00:03:39.880 You're talking about farmers.
00:03:41.280 This is a much broader range of people in our society.
00:03:45.800 It's the dairy farmer in Osgoode, Ontario, who tells me this is going to make it very difficult not only for him to save but for him to eventually pass on the farm to his children.
00:03:56.140 It is the owner of a small chain of dry cleaners who has 50 employees, most of them young people and new Canadians, some of whom he says he might have to lay off if these tax increases take effect.
00:04:08.940 It's the young man who left the country for 11 years to study for dentistry and then stopped me on roadside while I was out jogging for a charitable run to tell me he was just on the verge of opening a practice and hiring people,
00:04:22.380 but probably won't be able to do it in Canada because of this new liberal tax increase.
00:04:27.520 And what's so unfair about it is that this 73% tax on small business investment income is much higher than the tax on big business investment income.
00:04:43.020 So if a publicly traded multinational Fortune 500 company puts aside cash in a passive investment account, they only pay a total of about 50% all the way down from the time that that money is earned on the investment to the time it's paid out to the shareholder.
00:05:03.360 They'll pay about 50%.
00:05:04.860 But the small business who's trying to eventually compete with the big multinational will pay a tax rate that is more than 20% higher.
00:05:13.620 So this isn't about leveling the playing field.
00:05:15.600 It's about going after the little guy.
00:05:17.620 So let's talk about the impact of this.
00:05:19.640 You alluded to this already in terms of investment decisions, growth decisions.
00:05:26.800 What does this mean in terms of jobs and in terms of the economy?
00:05:29.840 Well, obviously, small business are the backbone of the Canadian economy.
00:05:35.480 They're 97% of private sector employment is done by small and medium-sized enterprises.
00:05:43.940 So whenever you hammer them with a 73% tax on their savings, it's going to affect workers right down the line.
00:05:49.980 It's going to, if you are a young person looking for your first job out of university, you're going to have fewer people hiring you.
00:05:55.460 If you are a farmer and you want to pass your farm on to your kids or to another family member, it is going to be more difficult with higher taxes and more compliance costs.
00:06:06.600 If you are that small business owner who has a dry cleaner or a small tourism operator and you're trying to put aside money for a rainy day or for your retirement, you will pay far more to the government.
00:06:20.340 This tax increase is in excess of $3 billion is going to be devastating.
00:06:28.680 And it's interesting.
00:06:30.420 Those are private sector estimates.
00:06:32.440 The government won't even admit its own calculations on how much money it's going to take out of the economy.
00:06:38.040 I noticed that groups are now rallying to try to deter the Justin Trudeau government from doing this.
00:06:46.720 I'm sure you've started to have conversations with them.
00:06:49.140 Where does this go from here?
00:06:50.700 What happens next?
00:06:52.020 We have to put massive, relentless pressure on liberal MPs to do the right thing and tell Minister Morneau they will not vote for this tax increase.
00:07:01.260 That is the only way it will stop.
00:07:02.940 I mean, Bill Morneau has indicated that he'll likely introduce what's called a ways and means motion in the fall or early winter.
00:07:10.900 That ultimately has to pass for these, and the legislation actually has to pass for it to be crystallized in law.
00:07:20.100 If enough liberal MPs get the message that they're going to lose their seat if they raise taxes on their small businesses, then we can stop this.
00:07:28.700 So I'm telling all Canadians, get on the phone and tell the liberal MPs to say no to this 73% tax on our small businesses.
00:07:39.380 And of course, you and I and other Conservative MPs will be voting no if this ever comes to a vote in Parliament.
00:07:45.220 Absolutely, and we will be using every legislative tool at our disposal to stand in the way.
00:07:51.820 We will, I've already demanded that Minister Morneau appear before the Finance Committee, explain himself,
00:07:58.220 that we bring the dozens of groups representing entrepreneurs, farmers, tradespeople, plumbers, etc., to come and speak out before that committee.
00:08:08.480 I hope that other parliamentary committees, like the Health Committee, will study how this will impact on the number of family doctors in small rural communities like the ones you represent.
00:08:19.900 I think we need to have our Employment Committee, what's called the Huma Committee, to study how many jobs will be lost.
00:08:26.460 We need a full court press using every creature, every living organism of the House of Commons to wage this effort against this tax.
00:08:36.740 So, we've got listeners here.
00:08:39.180 This is the Blueprint, by the way, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:08:42.360 I'm talking to Pierre Polyev, our Shadow Finance Minister, about the Liberal plans to tax businesses and individuals more.
00:08:53.180 Next step for you, Pierre, you said you're going to go to committee.
00:08:57.360 This will be debated in the House of Commons.
00:09:00.080 If someone is listening to this, they should be staying tuned to what you are doing and what we are doing as a Conservative caucus then?
00:09:06.100 Yes, go to my Facebook page.
00:09:07.940 I'll be regularly updating people on the fight against this new tax increase.
00:09:12.240 We need everybody to chip in and share their voice.
00:09:15.640 Spread the message online through social media to your friends.
00:09:19.780 Sign our petitions.
00:09:21.040 Call Liberal MPs.
00:09:22.820 Exert maximum pressure.
00:09:24.260 Let's get these guys to back down. 0.86
00:09:26.360 Thank you very much for being part of our podcast today.
00:09:29.220 Pierre Polyev, Ottawa Area MP and our Shadow Minister of Finance.
00:09:34.960 You've been listening to the Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:09:38.380 I'm your host, Member of Parliament, Tony Clement.
00:09:40.800 Thank you for listening.
00:09:42.020 We'll be back as the House resumes.
00:09:44.000 There'll be lots to talk about.
00:09:45.660 So please stay tuned.
00:09:47.180 Thank you for listening to the Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:10:01.020 To find more episodes, interviews and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada,
00:10:05.320 search for the Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.
00:10:09.660 We'll be right back.