Trudeau hiking taxes again in 2024

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Brace for impact, taxpayers.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be reaching deeper into your pockets in the new year with payroll tax hikes, a carbon tax hike and alcohol tax hikes.

Canadians will be paying higher payroll taxes because of the mandatory rising Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance contributions.

If you make $73,200 or more, you’ll be paying an extra $347 in payroll taxes in 2024, for a total tax bill of $5,104.

Your employer will also be forced to fork over $5,524 in the new year.

The federal government is imposing a new tax, which it calls “CPP2.” The original CPP taxes your income at six per cent up to $68,500. The new CPP2 expands that threshold and taxes additional income at four per cent up to $73,200.

Trudeau likes to claim he’s “working to make life more affordable.” But he’s also hiking a tax that directly makes life more expensive: the carbon tax.

The carbon tax increases the price of gasoline, diesel and home heating fuels, which is a big deal in our vast, cold country. The carbon tax also makes groceries more expensive, as it increases costs for the farmers who grow our food and the truckers who deliver it.

The carbon tax will cost the average family up to $911 in 2024 even after the rebates, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

The feds are also scheming up a digital services tax. This new tax targets social media platforms, companies operating digital marketplaces, and businesses earning revenue from online advertising, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb.

Consumers should expect to pay higher prices because of the tax. When faced with the three per cent DST in France, Amazon increased its commission charge to French vendors by the same amount.

You could be forgiven if all these tax hikes drive you to drink.

But when you pick up that case of Blue, a bottle of pinot or a mickey of rum, Trudeau will be taking an extra 4.7 per cent from you through his alcohol tax hikes.

Next year’s federal alcohol tax hike is expected to cost taxpayers almost $100 million.

Taxes in Canada already account for about half of the price of beer, 65 per cent of the price of wine and more than three quarters of the price of spirits.

While Trudeau hikes taxes, many other countries are providing relief.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation identified 51 national governments that provided tax relief during the pandemic or to ease the burdens of inflation. Those governments include more than half of the G7 and G20 countries and two-thirds of the countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Provincial governments – of all political stripes – are also providing relief.

Manitoba’s NDP government is suspending its fuel tax in the new year. Gas tax relief from Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives will save a family with a minivan and pick-up truck about $185 through June 2024. And the Liberals in Newfoundland and Labrador cut their gas tax by eight cents per litre.

The Alberta government promised to cut personal income taxes and passed legislation requiring a vote before a government can increase income or business taxes. Manitoba’s income tax cuts could save an individual taxpayer more than $2,000. Quebec lowered its income tax rate on the first two brackets. New Brunswick implemented significant income tax relief in 2023. And Prince Edward Island’s income tax cut will save middle-class taxpayers up to $200.

The fastest, simplest and easiest way for Trudeau to make all areas of life more affordable is to ditch his high-tax policies and allow Canadians to keep more of our money.

Up Next

Oil and gas: Canada’s richest natural resource

Don't Miss

Graves and school murders? What were we thinking?

Todayville

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Alberta judge sides with LGBT activists, allows ‘gender transitions’ for kids to continue

Alberta / 6 hours ago

Why the West’s separatists could be just as big a threat as Quebec’s

Business / 8 hours ago

Massive government child-care plan wreaking havoc across Ontario

Business

Massive government child-care plan wreaking havoc across Ontario

Published on June 30, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

It’s now more than four years since the federal Liberal government pledged $30 billion in spending over five years for $10-per-day national child care, and more than three years since Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government signed a $13.2 billion deal with the federal government to deliver this child-care plan.

Not surprisingly, with massive government funding came massive government control. While demand for child care has increased due to the government subsidies and lower out-of-pocket costs for parents, the plan significantly restricts how child-care centres operate (including what items participating centres may purchase), and crucially, caps the proportion of government funds available to private for-profit providers.

What have families and taxpayers got for this enormous government effort? Widespread child-care shortages across Ontario.

For example, according to the City of Ottawa, the number of children (aged 0 to 5 years) on child-care waitlists has ballooned by more than 300 per cent since 2019, there are significant disparities in affordable child-care access “with nearly half of neighbourhoods underserved, and limited access in suburban and rural areas,” and families face “significantly higher” costs for before-and-after-school care for school-age children.

In addition, Ottawa families find the system “complex and difficult to navigate” and “fewer child care options exist for children with special needs.” And while 42 per cent of surveyed parents need flexible child care (weekends, evenings, part-time care), only one per cent of child-care centres offer these flexible options. These are clearly not encouraging statistics, and show that a government-knows-best approach does not properly anticipate the diverse needs of diverse families.

Moreover, according to the Peel Region’s 2025 pre-budget submission to the federal government (essentially, a list of asks and recommendations), it “has maximized its for-profit allocation, leaving 1,460 for-profit spaces on a waitlist.” In other words, families can’t access $10-per-day child care—the central promise of the plan—because the government has capped the number of for-profit centres.

Similarly, according to Halton Region’s pre-budget submission to the provincial government, “no additional families can be supported with affordable child care” because, under current provincial rules, government funding can only be used to reduce child-care fees for families already in the program.

And according to a March 2025 Oxford County report, the municipality is experiencing a shortage of child-care staff and access challenges for low-income families and children with special needs. The report includes a grim bureaucratic predication that “provincial expansion targets do not reflect anticipated child care demand.”

Child-care access is also a problem provincewide. In Stratford, which has a population of roughly 33,000, the municipal government reports that more than 1,000 children are on a child-care waitlist. Similarly in Port Colborne (population 20,000), the city’s chief administrative officer told city council in April 2025 there were almost 500 children on daycare waitlists at the beginning of the school term. As of the end of last year, Guelph and Wellington County reportedly had a total of 2,569 full-day child-care spaces for children up to age four, versus a waitlist of 4,559 children—in other words, nearly two times as many children on a waitlist compared to the number of child-care spaces.

More examples. In Prince Edward County, population around 26,000, there are more than 400 children waitlisted for licensed daycare. In Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County, the child-care waitlist is about 1,500 children long and the average wait time is four years. And in St. Mary’s, there are more than 600 children waitlisted for child care, but in recent years town staff have only been able to move 25 to 30 children off the wait list annually.

The numbers speak for themselves. Massive government spending and control over child care has created havoc for Ontario families and made child-care access worse. This cannot be a surprise. Quebec’s child-care system has been largely government controlled for decades, with poor results. Why would Ontario be any different? And how long will Premier Ford allow this debacle to continue before he asks the new prime minister to rethink the child-care policy of his predecessor?

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

Business

Canada Caves: Carney ditches digital services tax after criticism from Trump

Published on June 30, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

Canada caved to President Donald Trump demands by pulling its digital services tax hours before it was to go into effect on Monday.

Trump said Friday that he was ending all trade talks with Canada over the digital services tax, which he called a direct attack on the U.S. and American tech firms. The DST required foreign and domestic businesses to pay taxes on some revenue earned from engaging with online users in Canada.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” the president said. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”

By Sunday, Canada relented in an effort to resume trade talks with the U.S., it’s largest trading partner.

“To support those negotiations, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, announced today that Canada would rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States,” according to a statement from Canada’s Department of Finance.

Canada’s Department of Finance said that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump agreed to resume negotiations, aiming to reach a deal by July 21.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday that the digital services tax would hurt the U.S.

“Thank you Canada for removing your Digital Services Tax which was intended to stifle American innovation and would have been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America,” he wrote on X.

Earlier this month, the two nations seemed close to striking a deal.

Trump said he and Carney had different concepts for trade between the two neighboring countries during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian Rockies.

Asked what was holding up a trade deal between the two nations at that time, Trump said they had different concepts for what that would look like.

“It’s not so much holding up, I think we have different concepts, I have a tariff concept, Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like, but we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today.”

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump hit Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs for allowing fentanyl and migrants to cross their borders into the U.S. Trump later applied those 25% tariffs only to goods that fall outside the free-trade agreement between the three nations, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump put a 10% tariff on non-USMCA compliant potash and energy products. A 50% tariff on aluminum and steel imports from all countries into the U.S. has been in effect since June 4. Trump also put a 25% tariff on all cars and trucks not built in the U.S.

Economists, businesses and some publicly traded companies have warned that tariffs could raise prices on a wide range of consumer products.

Trump has said he wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, shift the tax burden away from U.S. families, and pay down the national debt.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods paid by the person or company that imports them. The importer can absorb the cost of the tariffs or try to pass the cost on to consumers through higher prices.

Trump’s tariffs give U.S.-produced goods a price advantage over imported goods, generating revenue for the federal government.