THE SUDDEN AND MYSTERIOUS MUTENESS OF PIERRE POILIEVRE

Back in 2018, I sat down with the then Conservative finance critic and asked if his party could ever contemplate supporting a carbon tax.

Unlikely, he said, because the Conservative party wins when it dominates the issue of taxation.

“It's our core strength. The butcher offers meat; the baker offers bread; Conservatives offer low taxes. If we can define the election around a contrast on the taxation issue, we always win,” said Pierre Poilievre (for it was he).

The party under Erin O'Toole briefly backed a price on carbon, but Poilievre has made axing the tax the central pillar of his leadership.

Which makes it all the more strange that he won't declare his opposition to the government's proposal to increase the inclusion rate on capital gains tax.

In fact, since the proposal was unveiled in the April budget, Poilievre seems to have lost all his mirth — a fact commented upon in question period on Tuesday by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who noted that the Opposition leader was in a grumpy mood and “is wearing more makeup than I am.”

This sense that Poilievre is fed up of this sterile promontory was reflected in his “memo to corporate Canada” opinion piece in the National Post, where he said the government's capital gains proposal had led to business leaders blowing up his phone.

“They yelp: `What are you going to do about this?' My answer: `No, what are you going to do about it'.”

Yet Poilievre was more responsible than anyone for forcing the Trudeau government to water down its small-business taxes six years ago, after the government implied many businesspeople were tax cheats. Why would he not attempt a repeat of that triumph?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explained in a video last week (with 4.7 million views) that the rich are getting richer and “fairness” demands they pay more.

He offered the example of the female nurse who pays 29 per cent tax on her $70,000 salary, compared to the male investment banker earning $800,000, who only pays 26.8 per cent from selling assets. (That the investment banker had already paid a hefty amount of income tax is only hinted at).

The measure is designed to make “the very richest people profit a little less,” the prime minister said.

Those people — only 40,000, or 0.13 per cent of Canadians — earn an average income of $1.4 million and are “mostly in their sixties or older,” he said. Poilievre has been silent on all of this. It was left to Harley Finkelstein, the president of Shopify, to point out that a favourable capital gains tax incentivizes investment and economic growth.

There are plenty of other holes in Trudeau's argument, not least of which is that the 0.13-per-cent figure is highly questionable.

For one thing, 162,318 enterprises reported capital gains in 2019.

For another, based on the 2011 capital gains information supplied by Statistics Canada, two-thirds of people reporting capital gains over $250,000 in any given year do not do so the next year.

That suggests nearly 300,000 unique tax filers made gains of more than $250,000 in the decade 2011 to 2021 — far in excess of the 0.13 per cent cited by the government.

The Great Tax Crusader has been noncommittal on all of this.

That state of affairs can't last much longer.

Freeland said that the new inclusion rate, which was left out of budget legislation, will be introduced in the House of Commons before the summer break.

“I have certainly observed over the past week the Conservative leader equivocating, dodging and deflecting when asked about his position on our plans for tax fairness,” she said, clearly enjoying Poilievre's discomfort.

The peculiarity of the feeling went to her head and she claimed that the drop in the inflation rate to 2.7 per cent — the lowest in three years — was “thanks to the fiscally responsible economic plan” in the budget.

The deputy prime minister would be well-advised not to stand in the sun without a hat as the weather warms.

Nevertheless, this fall, the Conservatives will be forced to show their hands.

The public polls don't indicate that voters have been taken in by the government's “fairness” argument, which is merely a blatant cash grab designed to finance runaway spending.

An Angus Reid Institute poll suggested seven in 10 gen-Z and millennial voters don't buy the government is working in their best interests.

A Nanos survey for Bloomberg said more people view the capital gains measure negatively than regard it positively, with 45 per cent believing it will lead to decreased investment.

Maybe the Conservatives have more detailed polling that suggests middle-class voters support squeezing the rich. Maybe Poilievre doesn't want to give up nearly $20 billion in new revenue that could be his to use one day.

But if lowering taxes is the core Conservative strength, it is passing strange that the leader is not leading the charge. If he doesn't oppose the capital gains hike, he will be hardpressed to fight the Liberals' next trick in their 2025 budget, which could well be a wealth tax.

Just as butchers cut meat and bakers bake bread, the Conservatives should be opposing this tax rise.