Pierre Poilievre pledges to scrap capital gains tax changes under Conservative government

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre says he will reverse the capital gains tax rate changes announced in the 2024 budget, if he is elected.

While Poilievre had previously voted against the changes, and produced a video denouncing them last year, he had yet to commit to a reversal if he were to take power—until now.

The Conservative Leader told The Globe and Mail this week that he did not want to make a commitment until he had a costed plan to bring down the deficit while eliminating the tax increase.

In a LinkedIn post, Poilievre called the policy change a “Liberal jobs tax” and wrote that it was a bad idea before President-elect Trump’s planned tariffs, but is “outright insanity now.”

An accompanying call-to-action on the Conservative Party website claims that Liberals’ tax changes would “drive billions of dollars of machines, technology, business and paycheques out of our country.”

In a press conference following his announcement, Poilievre added he would be “slashing corporate welfare,” which he described as subsidies and handouts given to big businesses, to make sure reversing the tax hike doesn’t add to Canada’s deficit.

The Government of Canada proposed raising not the tax rate but the inclusion rate on capital gains—which include profits from the sale of assets like stock or property—from one-half to two-thirds last April. The proposal meant that a greater percentage of capital gains would be considered taxable income, potentially bumping some individuals and companies into new tax brackets.

The government planned to partially offset the impact of these changes with an increase to the lifetime capital gains exemption and a gradually increasing tax break called the Canadian Entrepreneurs’ Incentive. By doing this, the Liberal government’s stated hope was to help finance billions in spending on housing and other priorities and increase tax fairness between middle-class and wealthy Canadians.

Poilievre is making his position clear during a period of uncertainty for both the government and the tax rate changes themselves. First announced in April 2024 and originally set to take effect in June 2024, the tax policy was curiously absent from the Liberals’ motion to introduce the budget to the House of Commons. The proposed changes attracted significant heat from Canadian tech leaders, and the government has yet to actually make the policy into law.

Now, following Finance Minster Chrystia Freeland’s shock resignation in December, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he would prorogue Parliament and resign upon the election of a new party leader, and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s announcement that he plans to trigger an election when the House of Commons sits again, there is little to no runway for the changes to become law. Still, the Canada Revenue Agency is moving forward under the assumption that the changes will come into effect.

OMERS Ventures founder John Ruffolo, Shopify president Harley Finkelstein, and the Canadian Council of Innovators president Ben Bergen all reacted positively to Poilievre’s statement.

“This commitment reflects what the Council of Canadian Innovators has long championed: creating a fair and competitive tax environment that enables Canadian companies to scale globally and prosper locally,” Bergen wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Feature image courtesy Pierre Poilievre via LinkedIn.