Business
The “GST Holiday”… A Smokescreen For Scandal
A GST holiday sounded like it might be a good thing, but it turned out to be a gimmick to distract us from more serious issues, writes Marco Navarro-Genie. Courtesy Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada
One more racket from a government that rules by racket
The Prime Minister’s proposed GST holiday and $250 rebate scheme, initially estimated at $6.2 billion, is yet another calculated ploy to distract Canadians from the ethical failures of his government. Though the rebate portion was abandoned in Parliament, the GST holiday remains a superficial gesture in a government-induced affordability crisis.
This tactic highlights the government’s willingness to appear generous (with our money) while burdening taxpayers with increased debt to mask corruption and maintain power.
At the heart of this deflection lies the Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) program, dubbed by critics as the “Green Slush Fund.”
The Auditor General recently revealed shocking improprieties within the program. The findings include that the federal ethics office reported at least 90 violations of ethics rules and nearly $400 million handed out to companies linked to SDTC board members. This gross misuse of public funds undermines the program’s goals of fostering green innovation, instead solidifying public skepticism about Ottawa’s ethical compass.
Efforts to hold the government accountable for its mismanagement have faced significant obstruction. Parliament has requested unredacted documents related to the scandal but has been met with resistance from the government. Trudeau’s administration has provided vague justifications for its refusal to comply, citing reasons such as protecting commercial confidentiality and national security.
The Speaker of the House, a Liberal MP, ruled that Parliament has the constitutional right to demand these documents. He ordered the government to release them unredacted. However, weeks have now passed, and the government continues its obstructionist tactics. Parliament has been stalled for weeks, effectively freezing legislative proceedings.
Under parliamentary rules, the House can halt all proceedings until the government complies with the Speaker’s ruling. However, the Speaker lacks direct enforcement power, leaving the opposition parties to hold the line. Last week, the government attempted to submit documents but presented them in a heavily redacted form, further eroding trust.
The standoff highlights the lengths the federal government will go to avoid transparency. By refusing to release the documents, the Liberals undermine Parliament’s authority and delay critical legislative work to protect themselves from scrutiny.
The two-month GST holiday passed with NDP support, removes the GST/HST from:
- Prepared foods: Items like pre-made meals and restaurant dining.
- Children’s essentials: Clothing, footwear, and diapers.
- Select gift items: Categories remain vaguely defined.
However, basic groceries are already GST-exempt. According to food policy expert Sylvain Charlebois, the average Canadian household will save only a few dollars. This gesture is hardly a windfall in the context of surging inflation and housing costs — driven mainly by the government’s policies.
The fundamental aim of the GST holiday is not economic relief but political manipulation. By framing the Conservatives’ refusal to pass the broader $6.2 billion package as heartless, the government seeks to paint the Official Opposition as the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Liberal MPs have already taken to social media to attack the Conservatives for “denying Canadians a tax break.”
The government seems silent about the fact that the Bloc Quebecois also voted against the tax gimmick. Meanwhile, the NDP has shown a willingness to facilitate this naked vote-buying bid, further eroding its credibility as an opposition party.
The Conservatives have remained steadfast, demanding full transparency on the SDTC scandal before regular proceedings in the House can resume. This stance, however, has allowed the Liberals to weaponize affordability relief as a wedge issue.
The GST holiday’s costs, like most federal spending under this government, will disproportionately fall on Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. These three provinces already bear the brunt of federal revenue extraction through resource wealth, only to see their contributions funnelled into vote-rich areas of central Canada to prop up an increasingly unpopular government. The move further stokes resentment in the West, damaging national unity.
How this standoff will resolve is anyone’s guess. The government appears content to drag its feet, betting that public fatigue will weaken opposition resolve. Yet it remains clear that Liberals are willing to misspend billions in borrowed money to hide how they’ve misused hundreds of millions on partisan rewards and cronies. This cynical strategy prioritizes the political survival of their arrangement with the NDP over fiscal responsibility and democratic accountability.
For democracy to function, Parliament must assert its supremacy, hold this minority government to account, and ensure transparency in the face of systemic corruption and mismanagement. The NDP’s collaboration with the offenders may make it impossible, however. Allowing the government to defy Parliament and the Speaker’s ruling sets a dangerous precedent, weakening the foundations of Canadian democracy.
Marco Navarro-Genie is VP Policy and Research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is co-author, with Barry Cooper, of COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2020).
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Ireland Owens
Google soundly rejected the European Union’s push for the platform to censor content Thursday, declaring that it would not implement so-called “fact-checks.”
The tech giant told the EU that it would not incorporate fact checks into its search results and YouTube videos, Axios first reported. Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker wrote a letter to Renate Nikolay, deputy director-general for Communications Networks, Content and Technology at the European Commission, stating the fact-checking required by the law “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services.”
The European Commission’s Code of Practice on Disinformation, which was introduced in 2022, would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside its search results and YouTube videos and would also require it to incorporate fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms, Axios reported.
Axios’ report comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Jan. 7 that his company was ending its third-party fact-checking program in favor of implementing community notes. Meta’s announcement states that Meta’s platforms are “built to be places where people can express themselves freely.” Zuckerberg said that his company’s approach to content moderation often resulted in “censorship,” NPR reported.
Zuckerberg recently criticized the European Union’s data laws as “censoring” social media. The EU has rejected his claims as “misleading.”
Some people have criticized some major tech companies, claiming that they have censored conservative speech. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced in October the launch of an investigation into Google for allegedly censoring conservatives.
Zuckerberg criticized Biden officials for pushing Meta to remove content that the Biden-Harris administration alleged to be disinformation during a recent appearance on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to combat social media censorship.
In December, Trump announced that he was nominating Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission, stating that Ferguson “has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country.”
Minnesota Republican Rep. Tom Emmer said in a post on X that Google’s decision was a “step in the right direction,” adding “Kudos to @Google.”
A source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that the content of Google’s letter as reported by Axios was accurate.
From Conservative Party Communications
Canadians Deserve to Know How Much Carney is Being Paid
Today, Common Sense Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel Garner and Michael Barrett wrote this letter to Bruce Flatt, the CEO of Brookfield, calling on him to fully disclose Carbon Tax Carney’s compensation for his role as Chair of Brookfield Asset Management. The full text can be found below:
Dear Mr. Flatt,
We are writing with regard to the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, Mark Carney, who has acted in a senior leadership position for your company for some time now.
During the same time period, Mr. Carney has been advising Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, and advocating for policies that have arguably wreaked havoc on Canada’s economy, like the carbon tax.
After nine years of this NDP-Liberal Government, which by their own very public admissions have relied on Mark Carney for advice, Canadians are witnessing the worst decline in living standards in forty years. The cost of housing has doubled, and record numbers of Canadians are having to depend on food banks to survive.
Since August 2020, Mr. Carney has helped the NDP-Liberal Government hike its carbon tax on the backs of working Canadians, even endorsing it in his book, saying “One of the most important initiatives is carbon pricing…The Canadian federal carbon pricing framework is a model for others.” And since September 2024, when Trudeau appointed Carney as the Liberal Party’s Chair of the Leader’s Taskforce on Economic Growth, he would have had input into the most recent Fall Economic Statement which plunged Canada into a $62 billion deficit, blowing past the NDP-Liberal Government’s own fiscal guardrails.
And all the while Carney was advising the Liberals to continue carrying out their agenda of economic vandalism, he remained the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, posing grave ethical questions that could have real-life consequences for millions of Canadians.
For instance, just a few days after his official appointment as Chair of the Leader’s Taskforce on Economic Growth, The Logic reported that Brookfield Asset Management has been actively lobbying the same federal Liberal government he’s been advising for $10 billion from the Canadian taxpayer. And Mr. Carney has strongly advocated for policies that would destroy Canada’s oil and gas sector, while at the same time your company invested in oil companies in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
There are many other instances of questionable policy decisions the NDP-Liberal Government has made while Mark Carney was both advising them and acting as the Chair of Brookfield Asset Management – decisions that potentially could have resulted in Mr. Carney’s personal gain.
While we have written to the Federal Lobbying Commissioner to examine whether this arrangement broke any lobbying rules, that investigation may not shed public light on whether Mr. Carney was personally motivated by the structure of his compensation model with your company to advocate for certain policies in his senior advisory capacity with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.
Executive compensation for a Chair at a company the size of Brookfield can include salary, performance bonuses, stock options, lucrative expense accounts and more. Since Mr. Carney has a direct, senior, advisory line into Justin Trudeau’s government, and since your company has many interests which involve the type of policy on which Mr. Carney was advising the government, revealing the full scope of Mr. Carney’s compensation package to the public is essential to understanding what impact his access into the federal Liberal government had on his personal fortunes, if any.
For this reason, you must disclose Carney’s compensation structure with Brookfield Asset Management. This is especially important as Carney is now mounting a leadership campaign – with the help of members of Justin Trudeau’s inner circle – that could see him become the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and the Prime Minister of this country, with even more power and more access.
It is vitally important for Canadians to know whether or not Mr. Carney’s compensation with Brookfield could increase if the Liberals implement his policy ideas. While food banks report over two million visits in a single month, Canadians have a right to know the fine details about the impact of insider access on their lives.
You must be transparent with Canadians on this matter. The stakes could not be higher.
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