Tories voting against ‘fairness,’ PM says

Budget criticism siding with ‘multimillionaires’

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing the Conservatives of siding with “multimillionaires” and standing against fairness over their decision not to support the federal budget.

The Liberals’ latest spending plan, tabled in the House of Commons on Tuesday, aims to make corporations and rich individuals pay more tax on capital gains.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called it a “wasteful, inflationary budget” and said his party would vote against it.

On Wednesday morning at a meeting of the Liberal caucus, Trudeau said it isn’t right that multimillionaires are asked to pay less tax on capital gains than a teacher or electrician pays on their income.

He said the change would not affect 99.87 per cent of the population at all and does not apply to the sale of anyone’s primary residence.

He did not mention the New Democrats or Leader Jagmeet Singh, who hasn’t yet promised to back the budget despite his supplyand-confidence agreement with the Liberals.

The budget contains several NDP priorities, including funding for the first phase of national pharmacare and federal standards for long-term care.

Bloc Québécois Leader YvesFrançois Blanchet also said his caucus would not support the budget.

That means if the NDP breaks its agreement, the budget will fail, likely triggering an election.

Singh has said he wants to talk to Trudeau about what is missing from the budget, including any windfall taxes on excess profits for corporations.

He also said he believes the Conservatives would cancel important programs if they form government, including national child care and pharmacare.

Conservative housing critic Scott Aitchison said people shouldn’t believe the Liberals’ plan will ever come to fruition because they have promised a housing overhaul before and it never materialized.

“In 2017, Justin Trudeau stood in front of a large building project with lots of hard-working Canadians behind him and promised a lifechanging transformational National Housing strategy,” Aitchison said.

Aitchison said the solution for housing is that government should get out of the way.

But Trudeau said the Conservatives are the ones trying to stop progress.

“Canadians need responsible leadership right now — leaders who come to them with solutions ready to invest in Canadians idea,” he said.

The budget increased spending to more than $530 billion for 202425, with more than $11 billion in new spending largely focused on housing, student aid and grants, along with pharmacare.