The Canadian entrepreneurial spirit is being damaged by costly policies.
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Summary
On today's show, the Liberals are continuing their efforts to dig deeper and deeper into your pockets to take every last cent you have so they can spend it on their priorities. To talk about this much more, we bring on Tracy Gray, the Member of Parliament for Kelowna Lake Country, to talk about the detrimental effects of higher taxes and capital gains taxes.
Transcript
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hello and welcome once again to the blueprints this is canada's conservative podcast i'm your
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host to jamie schmell member of parliament for halliburton corps the legs brock with new content
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for you in 2025 every single tuesday 1 30 p.m eastern time don't forget to like comment subscribe
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and share this program because on today's show the liberals are continuing their efforts to dig
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deeper and deeper into your pockets to take every last cent you have so they can spend it on their
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priorities to talk about this much much more we bring on tracy gray the member of parliament for
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kelona lake country thanks for coming on absolutely great to be here all right uh there isn't a tax the
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liberals don't love that is clear and the harder they make it for people the more they get upset
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with people right so canadians say gas prices are too high taxes are too high the carbon tax is is
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driving me into poverty and and the liberals are like what are you complaining for like we have the
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greater good in our grasp right utopia is just on the other side if you just pay more taxes and have
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more patience but people are literally lining up to the food bank in record numbers right this life
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is harder under this liberal government yeah absolutely i mean really families are being
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crushed you've got small businesses that are are really struggling and now we're looking at people's
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retirements as well and we're looking at jobs and and one of the areas that we've seen that is is
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really affecting people's decisions is the capital gains tax increase it's just another tax increase
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this is another example and they're putting this in at a time when if you look at the oecd
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you know canada out of 38 countries has slipped down to being one of the lowest in productivity
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which means productivity relates to quality of life so our quality of life has fallen and the oecd
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themselves had said that unless there's substantial fiscal and economic policy changes in canada we will be at
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the bottom and will continue so for 40 years and so so this capital gains tax is another example of
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something that is affecting people's retirements it's affecting investment and it's affecting jobs
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so yeah and and we're not even building stuff in this country anymore right our gdp has gone down
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investments gone down everything has gone to every marker that you would traditionally use to measure how
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well a country is doing in comparison to others we are on the way down and i i don't mean to say this
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in a negative context because we always want to promote canada because it is the best country in
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the world in which to live but at the same time these policies being brought in by the ndp and the liberals
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are hurting everyday canadians the most yeah absolutely and we're looking at hurting retirees or those that
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are wanting to retire soon we're looking at at the working class which has been some of the hardest hit
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when you compare us to the united states for example uh we are now about 22 000 difference for the average
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for the average income whereas nine years ago it was it was very much on par so we're slipping in how far
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our dollar is going and most of the investment that we are getting is government invested right like
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government innovation we the government will decide what we choose is the chosen topic or direction we
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should be going and industry especially the big companies follow along because they're chasing the
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money right but in return they're getting barriers to competition so new entrants into the marketplace have
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a tougher time and often don't enter the marketplace so we get more consolidation and more of the fact
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you look at our telecom industry airline industry right the grocery industry there's a few big ones
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small ones and very few small ones and you're a business owner yourself yeah former business owner
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absolutely and you know once once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur at heart and and that's the
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lens that i use a lot you know we know that small businesses is the backbone of the country it's the
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the biggest employer the most amount of businesses and small businesses we know many of their sales are
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not up to what they were pre-pandemic they're still carrying a lot of debt and increases in taxes along the
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way whether it's capital gains tax for someone that's looking to uh to potentially retire i know
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you know even in my own riding i had heard from uh business owners saying well i guess i'm going to
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have to wait longer now to retire you know they're just going to have to put it aside and the thing with
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with business owners especially small business owners is they want to be independent of course that's
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why they're small business owners so they're looking at at you know holding for their retirement
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whether or not it's you know to get family members involved or maybe to to sell and so that's the
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retirement and so when you look at something like the capital gains taxes actually affected
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the retirement plans this isn't the wealthiest of the wealthy like like the liberals and the ndp like
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to say where the capital gains will affect only the you know the top point you know percent of you
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know less than one percent it that's not the case at all all right let's dig into that capital gains
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uh because uh for some people that don't know what it is um the the liberal changes if you will uh well
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ndp liberal changes let's go there um anything over 250 000 gets the new rate which is 67 i believe so
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it's it's even higher right so anyone making those investments for the long term that want to cash out
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are going to pay ever more in taxes right and you're right it's it stops that investment why are you going
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to put risk if there's no reward on the other side yeah and and we've seen this in in a couple of
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areas for example at the uh at the housing committee we've had a lot of testimony there
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from builders and people that work in construction saying that the capital gains tax will actually be
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harming home building and this is at a time when we're in a housing where we're in a housing crisis
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i have many quotes actually from yeah from from from the uh from the the housing committee uh one was
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from the executive director of the canadian uh roofing contractors association where he was talking
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about opportunities down in the united states um they have taxes that they have to pay there versus
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here it's very real um he's heard it directly firsthand of of that that they're going meaning
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there's businesses going and workers going as well people that are going down there to work
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uh we've heard from other companies uh that talk about raising taxes or levies uh are obviously a
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negative another one uh talking that they're already seeing land transactions slowing down as a result of
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the increased capital gains tax uh another this was the independent contractors and business
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association of bc talking about the capital gains tax having a dampening effect and uh will have a
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negative effect on home building for sure and it goes on so this isn't you know conservatives these are
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actual uh these are these are individuals who are working in industries like construction
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that are saying that this will not be helpful it's actually going to hurt home construction
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absolutely it will 100 so home construction when we're in a housing crisis we need to accelerate
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but of course it's it's hard for people to invest because again there's no reward there has to be
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reward right there's risk and reward right nobody's going to put their money into uh something
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break their back working to make it uh you know profitable and then sell it and then and then give
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almost 70 percent back to the government yeah we're seeing this as well in the innovation economy
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yeah i had the privilege of sitting in on the trade committee recently that was doing a study
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and the the issue of capital gains tax we were uh asking i was i was asking quite a quite a few of the
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witnesses that were testifying there so the innovation uh economy is basically in the tech sector
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so there have been many many people and businesses and organizations in the tech sector saying that
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this is actually going to hurt innovation or innovation economy and this then does flow into what we were
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talking about earlier which has to do with the productivity of canada so if we're not innovating
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you know we're not going to be bringing in that investment and we're not going to be
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uh keeping jobs here and creating good jobs well the majority of jobs that have been created are all
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government jobs and we know government does not ensure speedy turnaround right it's the exact opposite
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right their job is to slow things down so let's play cut one you'll probably recognize the person
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you're questioning i probably don't need to introduce her but uh let's play cut one as an entrepreneur
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and as a venture capitalist will canada be less competitive for talent investment or capital in
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the global market because of this capital liberal gains tax hike yes um we're going to lose entrepreneurs
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to other nations who are going to go to more tax-friendly environments um we are going to not be as
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competitive because we won't have the same amount of capital being put back into entrepreneurs
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in particular if you think about um the fact that we there is no tax benefit to investing your private
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capital into helping other businesses get started and in fact then you're penalized later on there's
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just there's just so many negative connotations to this yeah we're not even talking we're talking about
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you know the ones already established but she makes a good point arlene dickinson who's we all
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probably know that's why i didn't introduce her very famous um we're not even counting the opportunities
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that we miss that canada misses out on that goes south or other jurisdictions yeah absolutely we're
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missing out on those opportunities and we've heard testimony just very similar to this over and over
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and over again and this is at a time when we've already lost investment in in canada whether it's
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the resource sector or or you know in the innovation economy we've lost hundreds of thousands of jobs for
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example in the resource sector and you know and here we we now have emerging entrepreneurs emerging
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businesses that you know that canada's making it more difficult the liberals and the ndp are making
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it more difficult for businesses to start up here for businesses to to have investors uh invest here
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and for workers to stay here it's like it's like the perfect storm of of of going in the wrong
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direction they the the liberals uh and the ndp they just they just need to stop yes they do let's
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cue up cut two you'll see the uh as we get on this testimony so those uh watching and listening at home
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will see a bit of a a pattern here and the answers are very very very heartbreaking play cut two will
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canada be less competitive for talent investment or capital in the global market because of the
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liberal capital gains tax hike certainly i mean the short answer is yes thank you it's been widely
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reported how canada's gdp per capita has dropped over the last nine years so my question is will
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canada be less competitive for talent investment or capital in the global market because of this
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capital gains tax hike i believe so yes the liberals always talk about this gender-based analysis that
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they supposedly do on everything they bring in but that looked like a lot of female entrepreneurs
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who are saying this is coming upon scary times yeah absolutely and so they're you know their policies
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are not they're they're not helping you know if anything they're hurting they're hurting uh tech
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companies they're hurting uh those that are building housing and and all kinds of other industries as
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well and so they're they're not helping uh people uh wanting to be entrepreneurs they're not helping
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uh and by helping i mean from a policy perspective and from a tax perspective uh that that they're they're
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setting a sort of a like the way that we operate here in canada is not is not is not friendly it's not
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friendly for uh for small businesses and for entrepreneurs and they're making it worse that's
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shocking because you think about all the the the brain power that goes behind starting a business
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and everything like that and the the long hours and the heartache and you know the the worry um
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if they go to other jurisdictions say they move to the united states or something right we've we've
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lost all of that we've lost all of that capacity yeah yeah the intellectual capacity the jobs the
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opportunity the wealth that we create here it's all going away because of bad government policy
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and entrepreneurs are their visionaries yes you know they're visionaries so these are these are
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people that have ideas and they want to bring them to fruition and you know many times an entrepreneur
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can't go to a traditional uh financial institution you've got to look in in other areas and and
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start you know start somewhere or maybe grow you know sometimes that's an issue as well you might have a
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a business that's doing well but then you need to expand and so that's why you need to have people
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that might want to invest and if you're creating an environment that is really not in favor of that
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it just makes it more difficult for even our existing companies to expand and grow and maybe export
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as well well actually you know what you made a very good point too because as the money leaves
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the jurisdiction we want we want people to put the money in canadian banks right so they then in turn
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can loan it out and and do what they do um because people need mortgages they need cars and whatever
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right or start a business we're we're we're creating this ever growing environment where it's just
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not hospitable to ideas outside the box right the government approved box and and and and and this
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is extremely frustrating anyone that has owned a business anyone that's looking to start a business
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or even a young person coming out that might not want to go the traditional route of starting to work
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in some corporate structure that might want to do it their own but even farmers right like farmers
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starting their business we need food and we're striking down those people who actually want to
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provide it for us you know absolutely every everything that this government is doing is is is not helping
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you know it's not helping the tax increases whether it's the carbon tax increase whether depending on
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what industry someone works in the excise tax increase you know you've got the carbon tax increase
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or sorry the um the capital gains tax increase so you know there's all of these increases which is why
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uh you know we as conservatives and and our leader uh the peer up here paliev has said that it that
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when we're in government that we would do a tax reform task force we're basically going to look at at all
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of the taxes and look at what we can reform in order to make uh so that people can have more money in their
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pocket and so that we can really prompt the investment and and uh you know have those entrepreneurs stay
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here and and help with our productivity in canada bring you know make our gdp per capita better
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yeah dollar freed from taxation is a dollar invested in the economy right it's not me who said that i believe
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it was john f kennedy but the the the statement holds true right the more people and you just said it the more
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money people have in their pockets the more they spend in the economy and as the economy grows new jobs are created they start buying things economic activity starts to churn and and you have the spin-off
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jobs right it just steamrolls from there but if you you us as canadians are only given a certain amount
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of choice whether it be telecoms airlines groceries etc you're only feeding the big corporations and the
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smaller chains are the ones that suffering or don't start up at all that's basically where we are
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yeah exactly and and many small businesses in particular they many businesses do but in particular
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small businesses reinvest you know they really don't uh there's many small business owners that
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take you know as a personal wage very low especially at the very beginning uh of their business and but
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they know that you know down the road you know it'll pay off all of that investment and all of that hardship
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early on will pay off but that that uh sort of vision at the end isn't isn't as good as it used to be
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yeah you know they're the ones sponsoring kids hockey teams or soccer teams or whatever right
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they're the ones investing in the communities in which they live and we need to really change
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the mentality as you said to the liberals just stop just please please all right we're pretty much out
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of time but as you know the guests get the last word the floor is yours it was really great to be here
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and uh and just know that uh that us you know as conservatives we're out in our communities we're out
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across the country listening to people and really listening you know as you saw just some of the the
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little example of some of the testimony here as to actually how government policy is affecting
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people and affecting businesses yeah not necessarily a good way and we say that out of concern
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not to push down the the canadian dream right this is concern that we are hearing as members of
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parliament from our constituents and those in liberal and ndp held writings right there's
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great concern out there the promise of canada the promise of canada bring that back let's bring
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that let's bring it home at home tracy gray always a pleasure member of parliament for colonna lake
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country we appreciate your time we appreciate yours as well don't forget to like comment share
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remember low taxes less government more freedom that's the blueprint