GUNTER: Trudeau making Canadians pay even more in 2024

Remember during the 2015 federal election when Justin Trudeau positioned himself as the champion of the middle class? He was going to make the “rich” pay a little more tax so the middle class could get some relief. It’s debatable that theory ever worked. Contrary to lefty and media stereotypes, there have never been enough “rich” Canadians to finance widespread tax relief.

Indeed by 2018, the Liberals’ third year, over 80% of middle class families were paying an average of $840 more per year in federal taxes. And that was before the carbon tax. If you still believe Justin Trudeau is good for your taxes, 2024 is going to provide you with a rude awakening. According to Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), higher payroll, carbon and alcohol taxes could add between $700 and $1,300 to the tax bill of the average family.

Even at the lower end of these increases, the cumulative effect of Liberal tax increases since 2015 has been about $2,500 per year per family. In other words, you’d be $200 a month richer if the Liberals hadn’t been the government for the past eight years. And that doesn’t include the impact of inflation the Trudeau government has caused.

Or the effects of their immigration flood on housing prices and per capita GDP. Or the future costs of their net zero electricity grid and electric vehicle mandate. The cost of the Liberals’ “green” fantasies alone will be nearly $2 trillion over the next 25 years, which will have to be paid for by higher taxes or higher prices, or both.

Far from defending the middle class, the Liberals are choking the life out of it. This coming year, the federal government is raising the mandatory Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance contributions by $347 per worker. In total, the CTF reports, a worker earning just over $73,000 annually will pay $5,100 for CPP and EI, whether they ever use EI or not.

Employers will pay more than $5,500 per employee in payroll taxes. (The Liberals have been just as hard on small businesses as they have been on the middle class.) The carbon tax is going up – again – in 2024, this time from 14¢ a litre for gasoline to 17I¢. t’s also going up on propane and natural gas (but not, of course, on the home heating oil used by Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada).

Higher carbon taxes will ding the average household between $400 and $900 this year, even after the Liberals’ vaunted rebates. And if you’re thinking of drowning your tax sorrows in booze, remember that alcohol taxes rise by 4.7% on April 1. Now consider that inflation, which reached a high of 8.1% in June of 2022, has eaten a chunk of about $4,000 out of your income in the past two years as the price of groceries, gasoline, utilities and everything else has risen sharply.

Inflation is a Liberal creation, in large part, caused by their out of control spending, which has added hundreds of billions to the national debt and sent interest rates soaring as they borrowed more and more to finance their spending. Higher interest rates caused by Liberal mismanagement have eaten away at middle class incomes, too, with higher mortgage payments, rents and consumer loans.

Even the astronomical cost of housing is mostly due to Liberal policies, particularly on immigration. If the government insists on letting a million new people a year into the country, while housing for around only 300,000 is being built, the effects on housing prices is predictable. Liberal mismanagement has robbed Canadians of thousands of disposable dollars and their “green” agenda on electric vehicles and renewable energy will only compound the steal..