Morneau gets an earful at town hall

OTTAWA • Canada’s finance minister got a grilling Friday from taxpayers who are angry about the Liberal government’s proposed tax changes for small businesses.

Bill Morneau was in Oakville, Ont., for a town hall meeting where a questionand-answer session boiled over more than once into a shouting match. Some were bellowing at Morneau to answer their questions, while others tried to shout them down to let the minister talk.

Morneau’s fellow cabinet minister, Karina Gould, tried to maintain calm even as time was wrapping up with several people still lined up at microphones.

Morneau sat silently near the end of the hour-long session as person after person approached the microphones in the room to argue against the measures.

“This is not the first room like this that I’ve sat in,” he said at the start of his closing remarks.

He brought up one question that stood out to him about what the government planned to do next, only to be asked by more than one person to answer it directly, once and for all.

“Just to be clear, I’m trying to say what we’re focused on. I’m certainly not going to address the tax policy issues that we may consider after that. You can’t do that.

“You wouldn’t expect us to come to policy decisions on the fly,” he said, at which point the uproar began anew.

The Liberals have faced heated opposition — including pointed questions from within their own caucus — ever since Morneau unveiled the proposed tax changes over the summer.

Opponents insist the changes would hurt Canadians at different income levels and from many different sectors, including doctors, farmers and small business owners.

The rhetoric has become even more heated in recent days as the Opposition Conservatives have linked the changes to Morneau’s family company, Morneau Shepell, which offers individual pension plans.

One expert told the Commons finance committee those kind of plans could become more appealing if the tax proposals are implemented.

Morneau brushed off the questions about his family business, which he helped run before entering politics.

“I expect that when people have a strongly held point of view, they’ll use multiple tactics to try and make that point of view heard.

“That’s what it means to be a politician.”

Morneau has been waging a public relations campaign to reassure different sectors of the country.

On Thursday, he said technical fixes were in the works to address farmers’ concerns that the changes would impair their ability to bequeath the family farm to the next generation.

The issue will be on the agenda next week when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets with his provincial counterparts.