BATTERED FOR SAYING LOW-INCOME CANADIANS DON’T PAY TAXES AND NEEDLED BY TORY REFERENCES TO HIS ‘VAST FAMILY FORTUNE,’ TRUDEAU IS TAKING THE LIBERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN NEGATIVE.
Keep it positive in a campaign year, Justin Trudeau urged his MPS at last month’s caucus retreat.
But after days of being battered by the Conservatives in the House of Commons over what opposition leader Andrew Scheer called Trudeau’s “vast family fortune,” and the prime minister’s claim that low-income families don’t pay taxes, the Liberals are about to go on the attack.
The Prime Minister’s Office has been grappling with a way to respond to accusations that Trudeau is too removed from Canadians because of his privileged upbringing.
“Has (Trudeau’s) luxurious lifestyle made him so out of touch that he does not understand the everyday struggles of low-income Canadians?” Scheer asked in the House Wednesday.
The Liberals hope the solution will be to suggest the opposition leader is a hypocrite, having earned millions of taxpayers’ dollars as a career politician without
ever working away from Parliament Hill for any length of time in his adult life.
A Liberal source says they will describe Scheer as “The $6 Million Man,” a political lifer who has earned $2,956,000 in salary since first being elected in 2004, and a further $3 million in estimated pension benefits in that time. They contend that does not include the years he spent living rentfree at official residences, first while Speaker of the House, and currently at Stornoway, the official residence of the leader of the opposition.
The 39-year-old Scheer’s only job outside politics was a six-month stint as an insurance broker in Regina before being elected.
The Liberals also plan to target another 39-year-old career politician, Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre, also first elected in 2004 and who has since earned $2.5 million in salary. His lifetime pension is worth $2.45 million this year, according to a study by the Canadian Taxpayer Federation.
The hope is that getting personal will blunt the effectiveness of the attacks being levelled at Trudeau. Certainly they need to find some response.
The prime minister made the mistake of trying to get involved in a policy debate during question period on Tuesday, saying that “low-income families do not benefit from tax breaks because they do not pay taxes.” His point was that low- and middle-income families are better off because of spending like the Canada Child Benefit than they would be from income tax cuts because the amount they are taxed is so low in relative terms.
In policy terms, he is correct. The bottom 20 per cent of earners (those making $45,299 or less) earn 4.1 per cent of all income but pay just 0.6 per cent of all income taxes, according to conservative think-tank the Fraser Institute.
But question period in an election year is no time or place to indulge in complicated policy discussions.
On Wednesday in the House Trudeau was permanently playing defence, as Conservatives took turns citing constituents on minimum wage, outraged at the suggestion they are not paying their taxes while the prime minister enjoys the benefits of his “family fortune.”
Trudeau said he acknowledged his good luck in life but said everyone is defined by choices they make. “The choice I made was to serve as a high school teacher, to serve as a member of Parliament for Papineau and now to serve Canadians as prime minister. The choice we made as a government was to help the middle class and the people working hard to join it.”
This sense of noblesse oblige failed to impress the Conservatives. In fact, it seemed to make them more angry about his “ridiculous statement,” in the words of Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt.
Mark Strahl, the Conservative whip, reignited the “trust fund tax loophole” controversy that first emerged 18 months ago, with suggestions that the Trudeau family used an estate trust to save on tax obligations.
Strahl accused Trudeau of hypocrisy, using a trust fund operating outside a blind trust for over a decade. “He would have known that he was saving a fortune in taxes on his family fortune,” he said. The prime minister accused the Conservatives of stooping to the use of “personal attacks” and made a show of turning the other cheek.
But the Liberal party did not win 20 elections last century by adopting such a New Testament approach to campaigning.
As former Liberal campaign director Keith Davey once said, if your opponent says you’re fat, you say he’s bald. “Never get trapped on the defensive.”
The Liberals are preparing to take an eye for an eye.
Things are about to get very Old Testament around here.