Bill Morneau slams Freeland’s budget as a threat to investment, economic growth

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s predecessor Bill Morneau says there was talk of increasing the capital gains tax when he was on the job — but he resisted such a change because he feared it would discourage investment by companies and job creators.

He said Canada can expect that investment drought now, in response to a federal budget that targets high-end capital gains for a tax hike.

“This was very clearly something that, while I was there, we resisted. We resisted it for a very specific reason — we were concerned about the growth of the country,” he said at a post-budget Q&A session with KPMG, one of the country’s large accounting firms.

Morneau, who served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s finance minister from 2015 to 2020 before leaving after reports of a rift, said Wednesday that Freeland’s move to hike the inclusion rate from one-half to two-thirds on capital gains over $250,000 for individuals, and on all gains for corporations and trusts, is “clearly a negative to our long-term goal, which is growth in the economy, productive growth and investments.”

Morneau said the wealthy, business owners and corporations — the people most likely to face a higher tax burden as a result of Freeland’s change — will think twice about investing in Canada because they stand to make less money on their investments.

“We’ve created a disincentive and that’s very difficult. I think we always have to recognize any measure that creates a disincentive for investment not only impacts us within the country but also impacts foreign investors that are looking at our country,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat it. It’s a challenge. It’s probably very troubling for many investors.”

KPMG accountants on hand for Morneau’s remarks said they’ve already received calls from some clients worried about how the capital gains change will affect their investments.

Praise from progressives

While Freeland’s move to tax the well-off to pay for new spending is catching heat from wealthy businesspeople like Morneau, and from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, progressive groups said they were pleased by the change.

“We appreciate moves to increase taxes on the wealthiest Canadians and profitable corporations,” said the Canadian Labour Congress.

“We have been calling on the government to fix the unfair tax break on capital gains for a decade,” said Katrina Miller, the executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness. “Today we are pleased to see them take action and decrease the tax gap between wage earners and wealthy investors.”

“This is how housing, pharmacare and a Canada disability benefit are afforded. If this is the government’s response to spending concerns, let’s bring it on. It’s about time we look at Canada’s revenue problem,” said the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The capital gains tax change was pitched by Freeland as a way to make the tax system fairer — especially for millennials and Generation Z Canadians who face falling behind the economic status of their parents and grandparents.

“We are making Canada’s tax system more fair by ensuring that the very wealthiest pay their fair share,” Freeland said Tuesday after tabling her budget in Parliament.

The capital gains tax, which the government says will raise about $19 billion over five years, is also being pitched as a way to help pay for the government’s ambitious housing plan.

The plan is geared toward young voters who have struggled to buy a home. Average housing prices in Canada are among the highest in the world and interest rates are at 20-year highs.

Tuesday’s budget document says some wealthy people who make money off asset sales and dividends — instead of income from a job — can face a lower tax burden than working and middle-class people.

Morneau, who comes from a wealthy family and married into another one, is on the board of directors of CIBC and Clairvest, a private equity management firm that manages about $4 billion in assets.

According to government data, only 0.13 per cent of Canadians — people with an average income of about $1.4 million a year — are expected to pay more on their capital gains as a result of this change.

But there’s also a chance less wealthy people will pay more as a result of the change.

Put simply, capital gains occur when you sell certain property for more than you paid for it.

While capital gains from the sale of a primary residence will remain untaxed, the tax change could affect the sales of cottages and other seasonal and investment properties, along with stocks and mutual funds sold at a profit.

A cottage bought years ago and sold for a gain of more than $250,000 would see part of the proceeds taxed at the new higher rate.

But there’s some protection for people who sell a small business or a farming or fishing property — the lifetime capital gains exemption is going up by about 25 per cent to $1.25 million for those taxpayers.

Freeland said Tuesday she anticipates some blowback.

“I know there will be many voices raised in protest. No one likes paying more tax, even — or perhaps particularly — those who can afford it the most,” she said.

“Tax policy is not only, or chiefly, the province of accountants or economists. It belongs to all of us because it is how we decide what kind of country we want to live in and what kind of country we want to build.”

Morneau had little praise for what his successor included in her fourth budget.

Morneau said Canada’s GDP per capita is declining, growth is limited and productivity is lagging other countries — making the country as a whole less wealthy than it was.

Canada has a growth problem, Morneau warns

The government is more interested in rolling out new costly social programs than introducing measures that will reverse some of those troubling national wealth trends, he said.

“Canada is not growing at the pace we need it to grow and if you can’t grow the size of the pie, it’s not easy to figure out how to share the proceeds,” he said.

“You think about that first before you add new programs and the government’s done exactly the opposite.”

The U.S. has a “dynamic investment culture,” something that has turbo-charged economic growth and kept unemployment at decades-low levels, Morneau said. Canada doesn’t have that luxury, he said.

He said Freeland hasn’t done enough to rein in the size of the federal government, which has grown on Trudeau’s watch.

The deficit is now roughly double what it was when he left office, Morneau noted.

“There wasn’t enough done to reduce spending,” he said, while offering muted praise for the government’s decision to focus so much of its spending on the housing conundrum. “The priority was appropriate.”

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