With the long-awaited resumption of Parliament, my Private Member’s legislation, Bill C-222, An Act to amend the Expropriation Act (protection of private property),is moving forward in Parliament.
Bill C-222, which amends the Expropriation Act, is intended to provide some protections from government taking people’s property without compensation. Given the absence of property rights in the Canadian Constitution, landowners must look to expropriation legislation to protect their rights.
People should be secure in their homes and the best way for that to happen is through clear, enforced ownership rules. Things have not been going very well for liberty-minded Canadians lately, with globalization and the rise of authoritarianism in Canada. The lockdowns have made it convenient to replace free market economics with state control. Is this the hidden agenda of the new generation of radicalized Liberals?
The reality is countries with stronger property rights are more economically advanced.
Other interesting effects regarding property rights come into play. If you don’t have clear title to your home, you may not have a strong incentive to improve it. Rental housing turning into slums comes to mind.
If owning your home is more costly or difficult, you may end up renting. Making property rights more secure and easier to exercise seems likely to encourage people to maintain their homes.
With record sales, and high prices for real estate, Trudeau and his new “green” Finance Minister have taken notice, and not in a good way.
Our new green Finance Minister was looking at ways to raise taxes by taxing principal residences.
Canadians will have to wait and see if a New Federal Home Equity Tax currently under consideration, will be implemented. Without a doubt, something is being planned. The billions borrowed by the government during the pandemic mean tax increases in the future.
Certain factors are working against homeowners. Left-wing or socialist parties, into which the Liberal Party has evolved under Trudeau, do not believe in property rights. To quote a recent observation in the Canadian media about the current federal government,
The decision by the Liberal Government to require each of us to declare our principal residence on tax returns is information being collected for a reason. The homes of Canadians represent their largest asset for most people. A cash-starved government would like to “unlock” the value in your home. Only by unlocking the value will the federal government then be in a position to tax it. The question which needs to be asked by taxpayers is not when principal residences will be taxed, but how.
The most obvious change is removing the exemption on capital gains, including principal residences. The problem with that change is it requires the homeowners to sell their homes. That is where a Federal Home Equity Tax comes in. If homeowners are required to pay a home equity tax on top of property taxes, the Liberal government reaps the financial benefit immediately.
If that happens, many Canadians, particularly those on fixed retirement incomes, like our seniors, will be forced to sell their homes.
A Home equity tax is not the same as a capital gains tax. It is a broader tax on something called imputed rent. Imputed rent is an estimate of the rent an owner-occupied property would earn if the owner were paying rent rather than owning the property. Those earnings would be added to a taxpayer’s taxable income.
The other method to steal value from private property, is by “defacto confiscation,” which is why I brought forward my Private Member’s legislation, Bill C-222.
Chances are you missed the recent announcement by Trudeau about land.
Ahead of the United Nations meeting planned for Kunming, China, Trudeau has pledged to place restrictions on 30 per cent of our land by 2030.
Of the 10 largest countries in the world by land mass, only Canada has signed on to the United Nations scheme to set aside 30 per cent of its land and water by 2030.
Not China. Not Russia. Not the United States. Not Brazil, Australia, India, Argentina, Kazakhstan or Algeria.
Long on talk, short on details, nowhere in his announcement was mention made of compensation to private property owners. They will suffer the loss of the right to enjoy their land they pay property taxes on, when their property is included in the 30 per cent land grab.
This is very similar to the May 1st announcement banning thousands of firearms. Conspicuously missing in that charade of promising a buy-back is an actual dollar figure.
Confiscation without compensation.
Earlier this year I introduced Bill C-222, An Act to Amend the Expropriation Act (private property rights) to protect you from government policy that reduces the value of your private property without paying for it.
Should government be legally required to provide fair compensation when it steals value from private property owners?
That is now not the case.
Only by electing a majority Conservative government, will my Private Member’s Bill have any chance of becoming law.