Poilievre unveils capital-gains exemption for investments in Canada

Article content

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised on the campaign trail Sunday he’d exempt investors and businesses from capital-gains taxes if they put profits back into Canadian companies, saying the change would be like “rocket fuel” for the economy.

Article content

Article content

Meanwhile, the federal Liberal party faced mounting pressure to remove an incumbent candidate who suggested handing over a Conservative candidate to Chinese authorities to collect a lucrative bounty. At the same time, the Liberals refused to let their former MP Han Dong, embroiled in a China-interference controversy, run again under the Liberal banner in this election.

Article content

Poilievre took advantage of a day when Liberal Leader Mark Carney had no public events to unveil the Conservatives’ latest economic policy plank. He also used it to blast Carney over comments by Liberal Paul Chiang about capturing a Conservative candidate critical of the Chinese communist regime and handing him over for a reward.

The Tory leader said a government he led would exempt businesses and individuals from capital gains tax when they sell shares, real estate and other assets if they ploughed the gains back into Canadian enterprises.

As it stands now, the prospect of paying capital-gains tax is a disincentive to selling old assets that could be used to build housing, manufacturing or other businesses, said Poilievre.

Article content

“This will be like economic rocket fuel for Canada, to put us in liftoff,” he said on the floor of a plastics factory in north-end Toronto. “We will soar above the Americans … and make this country boom. The Americans will see the investment pouring back over the border into Canada. It will allow us to build the infrastructure we need — pipelines, mines, factories, export terminals.”

He cited Canada’s declining rates of investment and per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) during what he calls the “lost Liberal decade” since Justin Trudeau was first elected, but said his plan would help reverse the slide in standard of living.

Not only would the proposed tax break lead to more investment in domestic businesses, it would encourage people to sell assets abroad with no penalty if they put the profits into companies here, said Poilievre.

Article content

Article content

The tax break would be available until the end of 2026, he said. The party estimates it would cost about $5 billion a year in lost revenue for two years. The gains would be taxed later “when investors cash out or move the money out of Canada,” said a party news release.

Poilievre cited the example of a factory owner with excess land, who now would pay considerable tax if he or she sold the unused property. By exempting the owner from capital-gains tax, the land could be sold to a developer to build new homes, with the factory owner reinvesting the profits in the business.

A spokesman for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, while not commenting directly on the proposal, suggested it was the type of tax reform business would like to see.

Article content

“Encouraging business investment at home isn’t just the right thing to do in the face of tariffs from the United States — it’s critical to our success,” said Matthew Holmes, the Chamber’s executive vice-president, in a statement.

Carney had a private meeting in Ottawa Sunday and later with election volunteers, but neither event was open to the media. The Liberals provided no details about the events other than that the first meeting was with a family.

However, the party continued Sunday to face pressure to remove Chiang as a candidate in his Toronto-area riding of Markham-Unionville over the comments he made about Conservative candidate Joe Tay, who is running in Don Valley North.

Hong Kong police levied a bounty of $1 million Hong Kong dollars (about $183,000) on Tay after charging him under the city’s widely condemned National Security Law. His alleged offence was operating a YouTube channel here that is critical of the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong government.

Article content

Tay had originally vied for the Conservative nomination in Chiang’s riding. A China democracy activist group revealed Friday that Chiang told Chinese-language journalists in January the bounty made Tay a controversial choice.

Then he suggested that people turn the Conservative into the Chinese consulate for the money.

“If you can take him to the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto, you can get the million-dollar reward,” he said at a news conference.

As the story broke Friday, Chiang issued an apology, calling his remarks “deplorable” and a lapse in judgment, while saying he supported Hong Kong residents in their fight for human rights and freedoms.

A variety of critics of the Chinese government called for the Liberal party to reject Chiang as a candidate, but the party said only that he had admitted and apologized for his mistake.

Article content

NDP MP Jenny Kwan, who has said she’s been the target of Chinese interference herself, added her voice to the condemnation of Chiang, saying Sunday his comments were “absolutely astounding.”

“He ought to know that when the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) went out and put a bounty on anybody, including Canadians, that cannot be acceptable,” said the member for Vancouver East. “That is intimidation at its worst, and yet he played right into it. He advocated for people to bring him to the Chinese consulate to collect the bounty. In what universe is this normal?”

Poilievre made his first public comments on the affair Sunday, saying it was “amazing” that Carney would let Chiang run for the Liberals. He linked Carney’s stance to loans obtained by Brookfield Asset Management — whose board the Liberal leader chaired until recently — obtained from China.

Article content

“If Mark Carney would allow his Liberal MP to make a comment like this, when would he ever protect Canada or Canadians against foreign hostility?”

Asked Sunday about the growing chorus of complaints about Chiang, the party repeated a previous statement that noted his apology, but stopped short of indicating whether or not he would remain as a candidate.

“Paul Chiang recognized that he made a significant lapse in judgement,” said the Liberal statement. “He apologized and has been clear that he will stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Hong Kong as they fight to safeguard their human rights and freedoms.”

Meanwhile, a Toronto-area MP ejected from the Liberal caucus over a different China controversy revealed Sunday that the party had decided it would not have him as the candidate in Don Valley North riding.

Article content

Dong first fell into hot water when Global News alleged he had urged Chinese diplomats to delay releasing Canadian prisoners Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor so as not to aid the Conservatives. He denied the charge and sued Global, while the federal inquiry into foreign interference backed his version of events.

But in her final report, commissioner Justice Marie-Josée Hogue did cite intelligence reports of a Beijing-backed effort to bus in out-of-riding foreign students to help get Dong elected as the Liberal candidate in 2019. She said she wasn’t ruling on the accuracy of the reports but said they suggested nomination contests “may be gateways for foreign states that wish to interfere in our democratic processes.”

In a statement on the X social-media platform Sunday morning, Dong said the party informed him “they will have a new candidate running in Don Valley North.”

Article content

“I have decided not to participate in this election to give the LPC the best chance to form a government and protect us from the threat of Donald Trump,” he wrote. “I am disappointed not to be part of this important campaign.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was also on the campaign hustings Sunday, and proposed having the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. use more of its financial might to offer low-interest mortgages to Canadians.

National Post

Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.

Article content