Canada’s finances are in dire shape. The government is twisting, turning, dodging, and obfuscating, but they can’t hide from the reality our current national debt and spending trajectories are unsustainable..With our national debt standing at nearly $1.2 trillion and growing at a rate of nearly half a billion dollars per day, even the Trudeau Liberals realize something has to change. They need a new source of money fast..There is a capital pool just sitting out there worth trillions of dollars and a growing number of progressive policymakers feel it’s ripe for the picking. The untapped resource the Liberals are eyeing and salivating over is your home equity..Last fall, Liberal candidate for New Brunswick Southwest, Jason Hickey said, “For anyone selling their primary residence, you do make money on that so unfortunately, you will have to pay tax on that.”.It was a rare candid moment from a Liberal candidate and they rushed to ensure he walked back the comment..The Liberals scramble to deny they’re considering taxing home equity on primary residences every time the issue arises. The issue keeps arising though with increasing frequency and the Liberal denials keep getting weaker. The warning rumbles of a potential home equity grab by the government are getting too loud to ignore..The cat really came out of the bag back in 2020 when Blacklocks Reporter broke the news the feds were eyeing a home equity tax. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) spent $250,000 to research the possibility of implementing a home equity tax. The CMHC is a Crown corporation that answers to parliament. When they commission studies, they are doing so on behalf of the government. They wouldn’t be studying a home equity tax unless the government was considering implementing one..The study the CRTC commissioned was done by UBC and some of the quotes from them were telling. UBC researchers in the report described homeowners as lottery winners and implied homeowners happened upon their wealth rather than earned it..The CMHC has committed nearly $8 million to fund a group called Collaborative Housing Research Network (CHRN) and tasked it with studying Canadian housing issues..CHRN is collaborating with the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC). Still with me? Bureaucrats love squirreling money and actions away in long chains of groups with fancy names and this is a prime example of it..Now within the CHEC is a Carlton University professor named Steve Pomeroy. Pomeroy is also aligned with the Centre for Urban Research and Education (CURE). Pomeroy recently released an essay where he referred to home equity increases as “windfall gains” and proposed they need to be taxed. Pomeroy tries to make the case home equity taxes would aid lower-income Canadians in purchasing homes because such a tax would reduce the value of real estate. It is an absurd proposition. Yes, home equity taxes will reduce the value of homes, but in doing so they sure as hell won’t encourage more people to invest in home ownership. What we are seeing is a person who had tasked himself with trying to justify home equity taxes and that was the best he could come up with..The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has been demanding tax filers to report the sale of a primary residence under threat of an $8,000 fine even though sales are not taxable (yet). Why would the tax agency need that information if they had no interest in taxing the transactions eventually?.It’s clear the government has been trying to lay the groundwork for a tax on primary home equity for some time now. When they truly start openly pitching such a tax, they want to ensure they have as many studies and papers to bury citizens under as possible. One can see how the politics of envy will be played as well. They are portraying homeowners as people who stumbled into assets through sheer luck and at the expense of lower-income Canadians. They will work to shame homeowners into acceding to a tax upon the wealth they worked, saved, and invested in. Anybody opposing such a tax will be called selfish and greedy of course..The imposition of an equity tax on primary residences is a matter of when rather than if. The only thing keeping the Liberals from imposing it right now is their lack of a majority government. If they cut the right deal with the NDP, they will have the parliamentary strength to make a grab for the home equity of Canadians..We’re hearing the warnings now — will we heed them, though? Or will we passively stand by while a fiscally inept federal government swoops in and takes a bite out of our most valuable assets?.Cory Morgan is Assistant Opinion & Broadcast Editor for the Western Standard.cmorgan@westernstandardonline.com
Canada’s finances are in dire shape. The government is twisting, turning, dodging, and obfuscating, but they can’t hide from the reality our current national debt and spending trajectories are unsustainable..With our national debt standing at nearly $1.2 trillion and growing at a rate of nearly half a billion dollars per day, even the Trudeau Liberals realize something has to change. They need a new source of money fast..There is a capital pool just sitting out there worth trillions of dollars and a growing number of progressive policymakers feel it’s ripe for the picking. The untapped resource the Liberals are eyeing and salivating over is your home equity..Last fall, Liberal candidate for New Brunswick Southwest, Jason Hickey said, “For anyone selling their primary residence, you do make money on that so unfortunately, you will have to pay tax on that.”.It was a rare candid moment from a Liberal candidate and they rushed to ensure he walked back the comment..The Liberals scramble to deny they’re considering taxing home equity on primary residences every time the issue arises. The issue keeps arising though with increasing frequency and the Liberal denials keep getting weaker. The warning rumbles of a potential home equity grab by the government are getting too loud to ignore..The cat really came out of the bag back in 2020 when Blacklocks Reporter broke the news the feds were eyeing a home equity tax. The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) spent $250,000 to research the possibility of implementing a home equity tax. The CMHC is a Crown corporation that answers to parliament. When they commission studies, they are doing so on behalf of the government. They wouldn’t be studying a home equity tax unless the government was considering implementing one..The study the CRTC commissioned was done by UBC and some of the quotes from them were telling. UBC researchers in the report described homeowners as lottery winners and implied homeowners happened upon their wealth rather than earned it..The CMHC has committed nearly $8 million to fund a group called Collaborative Housing Research Network (CHRN) and tasked it with studying Canadian housing issues..CHRN is collaborating with the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC). Still with me? Bureaucrats love squirreling money and actions away in long chains of groups with fancy names and this is a prime example of it..Now within the CHEC is a Carlton University professor named Steve Pomeroy. Pomeroy is also aligned with the Centre for Urban Research and Education (CURE). Pomeroy recently released an essay where he referred to home equity increases as “windfall gains” and proposed they need to be taxed. Pomeroy tries to make the case home equity taxes would aid lower-income Canadians in purchasing homes because such a tax would reduce the value of real estate. It is an absurd proposition. Yes, home equity taxes will reduce the value of homes, but in doing so they sure as hell won’t encourage more people to invest in home ownership. What we are seeing is a person who had tasked himself with trying to justify home equity taxes and that was the best he could come up with..The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has been demanding tax filers to report the sale of a primary residence under threat of an $8,000 fine even though sales are not taxable (yet). Why would the tax agency need that information if they had no interest in taxing the transactions eventually?.It’s clear the government has been trying to lay the groundwork for a tax on primary home equity for some time now. When they truly start openly pitching such a tax, they want to ensure they have as many studies and papers to bury citizens under as possible. One can see how the politics of envy will be played as well. They are portraying homeowners as people who stumbled into assets through sheer luck and at the expense of lower-income Canadians. They will work to shame homeowners into acceding to a tax upon the wealth they worked, saved, and invested in. Anybody opposing such a tax will be called selfish and greedy of course..The imposition of an equity tax on primary residences is a matter of when rather than if. The only thing keeping the Liberals from imposing it right now is their lack of a majority government. If they cut the right deal with the NDP, they will have the parliamentary strength to make a grab for the home equity of Canadians..We’re hearing the warnings now — will we heed them, though? Or will we passively stand by while a fiscally inept federal government swoops in and takes a bite out of our most valuable assets?.Cory Morgan is Assistant Opinion & Broadcast Editor for the Western Standard.cmorgan@westernstandardonline.com
