Federal budget adds billions in spending, paid for tax hike on rich

This budget is about fairness for every generation. With billions of dollars in promises already made to win back younger voters, the Finance Minister revealed how she plans to pay for it. We’re making Canada’s tax system more fair by ensuring that the very wealthiest pay their fair share. Chrystia Freeland targeting 40,000 of the richest Canadians. The idea? To tax the more on capital gains over $250,000 a year. Like their profit on selling a second property. Today it is possible for a nurse or a Carpenter to pay tax at a higher marginal rate than a multi millionaire. That’s not fair. All capital gains earned by 300,000 companies and trusts will be hit, too. That new revenue is pegged at bringing in more than $19 billion over the next five years. But economists are skeptical it will actually work. Individuals that will pay, you know, consultants, tax consultants in order to identify the best ways to distribute their their wealth across the globe in order to to diminish their their tax. Those taxes would help top up a housing accelerator fund, fast track construction on rental apartments and free up government land like these old Defense Department buildings and Canada Post properties to help build nearly 4 million new homes by 2031. There isn’t a path to balancing the budget, but the government plans to cut the deficit in half in five years. Conservatives will vote against this wasteful inflationary budget that pour, that is like a pyromaniac spraying gas on the inflationary fire that he lit, the NDP says. It’s disappointed the Liberals aren’t doing more to tackle corporate greed. While we fought for certain things in the budget that we that are very important, they’re going to give relief to people. We have some serious concerns. Actually, there’s disappointment in this budget for some Canadians who are on disability. Yeah, and disability groups and the NDP are upset about the new federal disability benefit. The government has been promising this since 2020. It was supposed to help lift people with disabilities out of poverty, but we learned it won’t start going out until July 2025, and the maximum people can receive is $200 a month. Advocates called for about $1000 a month and say that this doesn’t cut it. The ND PS Leader tonight calling insufficient to Ashley Burke in Ottawa. A big focus for the Liberals tonight. Young Canadians, a group that has helped them get elected in the past but has since shifted its support. Olivia Stefanovic looks at how this budget is aimed at changing that. Liberals say they’re speaking to millennials and Gen. Z but do they hear them? I’m amazed at how much things have gone up. And you know how everyone’s struggling? The housing crisis is a big one. Young voters could be of particular consequence. They help this government get elected in the 1st place. Now they’re needed again. It is just harder to establish yourself right now if you are a younger Canadian. The federal government is promising to even the playing field for those born between 1981 and 2012. Yeah, I’ve heard so many people say I did all the right things. I studied really hard. I got a good job. I work hard at that good job. And still things don’t seem to be working out. And to me it’s about saying as a country, we have to fix that. The federal budget includes 10s of billions of dollars of new spending targeted to younger generations, including more childcare spaces, job opportunities, student aid and a slew of housing measures to build almost 4 million new homes. It does more than any budget has done recently to acknowledge that young people are really struggling. This economist says it’s an attempt to re attract the largest demographic of voters. They are the bonafide sandwich generation. They have to take care of the people that are too young, too old and too sick to work and there’s not much help for them. Something has to be done. Whether this budget does enough, some say it’s too soon to know. It is obviously appealing. But they have been saying that for the past couple of years, and it just seems like it’s getting worse. With up to 18 months until the next federal election, the challenge for the government remains how to close a widening gap in the polls now that the generations that put the Liberals in office appear to be leaving the party in droves. Olivia Stefanovich, CBC News, Ottawa Let’s bring in our Chief political Correspondent Rosemary Barton and and Rosie. This budget of course, aimed at attracting voters like the ones Olivia just mentioned. What else is the budget trying to do, Ian? As well as those younger voters who are so important to the Liberals back in 2015 and heavily targeted in this budget, there’s another, maybe broader group of people the budget speaking to and that is so-called progressives. Polls suggest right now that some NDP supporters who the Liberals are trying to win over are instead moving to the Conservatives to the right. They’ve been talking a lot about the working class, with some success, clearly. So take, for instance, that increase in the capital gains task tax that’s very much aimed at NDP supporters and progressive who believe that tax fairness matters. This is a budget Conservatives don’t like, and that’s fine for the Liberals. They want that contrast between them to become even clearer. And so what’s the biggest challenge now? Quite simply, delivering the government is up against that electoral clock. There’s a lot of measures, particularly in housing, that Canadians are not going to see right away. The other questions that Canadians can, I think, rightfully ask themselves is why weren’t some of these measures in place before? The housing crisis didn’t just appear out of nowhere? So the Liberals have, you know, likely about 18 months or so now to start delivering on these things and convincing Canadians that these are the right answers to their problems. Boris Marie Barton, we’ll see you later in the program. Thank you. Thanks, Ian.