My old Lamborghini is just fine, thank you. It was amusing to read a conservative’s apology the other day for people who buy luxury cars. After duly noting the foolishness of finance minister Chrystia Freeland’s luxury tax on the toys of the very rich, I had gone on to more important issues.
But now I am mad. Freeland failed us. Her budget is a farce. She is toying with us. We need a legitimate wealth tax in Canada. And to do that you have to start closing tax loopholes. Not all of us can afford the best accountants to wheel and deal and advise. We want everyone to pay their share.
And oddly enough, I know a guy with a couple luxury yachts. He loves sailing. One is parked on Lake Ontario and the other is down in the Caribbean. He might be well off but he is hardly filthy rich. He rents out one yacht while sailing the other. He started with a skiff years ago and kept trading up.
This must be the first time I have agreed with that conservative writer. He thinks the Trudeau luxury tax is just show biz. And he concedes if we are ever going to pay the cost of the pandemic in Canada, it is going to take a lot more than a tax on luxury goods.
What really annoys me about the budget though is that the mainstay of Ms. Freeland’s effort is child care across Canada. She is probably going to be old and grey long before all the provinces agree to the federal government taking over that territory. There are lots of easier ways for the federal government to subsidize child care for working parents.
If we really want to start negotiations with the provinces, Pharmacare is by far the better fight. Logic is on the side of the feds. We can all understand that a single buyer for the entire country can do better than individual provinces and territories, each negotiating for various quantities of product.
And we all have had enough of the environmental bullshit from Justin Trudeau until he puts an end to the twinning of the TransMountain pipeline.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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