BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following is in response to 'LETTER: MP says new luxury tax will 'devastate' manufacturing,' published June 9.
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I would like to respond to John Brassard's letter in which he says: “Conservatives will continue to be the voice of the millions of Canadians left behind in Justin Trudeau’s economy who are looking for relief from the cost-of-living crisis with common-sense solutions to leave more money in Canadians’ pockets."
I understand that you are a federal politician. Were you one of the Conservative MPs that laughed during Question Period when Jagmeet Singh was saying that people were having trouble buying groceries? I can tell you as a full-time worker in Orillia, that your voicing of concerns about the tax affecting items like boats over $250,000, and airplanes that cost over $100,000 is about as tone deaf as it can get.
Just to be clear, a luxury boat costing $250,000 is 10 times my annual salary. Think of the income tax I pay in those 10 years, I will bet that I pay more in income tax in those years than the luxury tax amount.
I have very little faith that you and your Conservative peers have the average worker's best interest at heart. I want you to look around yourself and tell me how many of your friends can afford those items. I can tell you how many of my friends can: Zero.
You and many Conservative representatives have lost the plot. When I am looking at not being able to make a $1,350 a month rent, (and yes I know how fortunate I am to have a rent that low). I know that many of my peers are looking at rents of $1,600 to $2,000 for a two-bedroom apartment. Somehow a tax on a $250,000 boat or $100,000 airplane seems of very little relevance in the current economy.
You are worried about jobs in the manufacturing sector, because of the new tax. Of course you are, because it's easy to blame the loss of jobs and wages on taxes. But is that really what costs jobs? No, what costs jobs is that corporations decide what is best for them, so when the people that work in them become a liability, and so look to cheaper places to do manufacturing.
That is globalization, not a luxury tax. Do you know why corporations do what they do? Easy, the government lets them. The key to keeping jobs is to manage the corporations that do business in Canada.
A Conservative government would be far more corporation friendly than the current Liberal regime, and that is saying something. It would not look out for the worker, no, it would do all kinds of horrific things to the lower economic wage groups, under the guise of vague phrases, like “creating jobs” or “controlling the deficit”.
I am no friend of Justin Trudeau, and I have not been since SNC Lavalin and Jody Wilson-Raybould's mistreatment. I will say this though, every single thing he did with CERB, and other economic support during the pandemic, kept me warm in the winter, fed and housed, as I am sure this was for many Canadians. I also am sure that had if you and your peers formed the government, we would have all been left struggling.
To round out my response to your letter, I will address the sound byte response that you closed with directly. You do not want to put money in the hands of hard working Canadians, because they will spend it, and likely in local economies.
You want money in the hands of corporations and the very rich, so that it can grow for them, and leave the common worker paying the freight.
Finally, I wonder how you can be the voice of Canadians when you can't even decide who is speaking for you. How many leaders have you gone through since Trudeau has been in power? It has been five. (Harper, Ambrose, Scheer, O'Toole, Bergen) Prove that you can stabilize the country and the economy after you stabilize your own party.
Brad Johnston
Orillia
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