Opinion: Time to stop complaining about the capital gains hike and get back to work
It would seem bizarre that anyone would welcome new taxes, especially those that have to pay them. And I am guessing I am in the top one per cent of Canadian taxpayers. So, is what you are about to read an endorsement of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s increase in the capital gains tax? Yes and no. The “no” is easy: We are all against new taxes. But it’s not that simple. And that’s the problem — no one is attempting to provide the whole picture, the understanding of which would help assess the merits of this particular tax initiative.
Let’s start at a high level. The Canadian economy is not performing well relative to its peers. We are losing on a lot of metrics: GDP growth, productivity, average basic income. It’s not pretty. The government’s job is to reverse this trend and show leadership. Almost 20 years ago, I sat on a panel with Mike Lazaridis and Joe Rotman that examined our failure to match the Americans in the effective commercialization of the research activity that is carried out in Canada, in both the public and private sectors. Unfortunately, that is still a handicap, but important changes are happening, such as by way of the Creative Destruction Lab (where I am chair), which was born at the University of Toronto and is now a global technology incubator of real note.
More importantly, the country is not investing aggressively in those sectors where the global economy is on fire. We are good at large language model AI — in fact we were involved in its infancy. But American venture capital and the higher appetite for risk south of the border — which is far in excess of what we like to tolerate — quickly resulted in the growth of that industry shifting there.
That reticence to be aggressive extends to
Read more on financialpost.com
