By Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced sweeping consumer relief measures Thursday, including a temporary federal sales tax suspension and direct payments to millions of Canadians, as his Liberal government confronts mounting public dissatisfaction over living costs ahead of a potential election.
“Our government can’t set prices at the checkout, but we can put more money in people’s pockets,” Trudeau said during a Toronto news conference, unveiling plans to distribute CA$250 (US$107,440) checks to an estimated 18.7 million Canadians who earned up to CA$150,000 in 2023.
The relief package includes a two-month suspension of federal goods and services tax from December 14 to February 15 on various consumer items, including children’s clothing, shoes, toys, diapers, restaurant meals, alcoholic beverages, and video game consoles. Christmas trees and various snack foods are also included in the tax holiday.
Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre dismissed the announcement as a “two month temporary tax trick,” arguing it fails to offset planned increases in carbon taxes. The measures come as Trudeau’s Liberals trail the Conservatives by 13 percentage points in recent polling, with Nanos showing Conservative support at 39% compared to the Liberals’ 26%.
“Politically, it’s probably too little too late and it feels like a desperate move on the part of an unpopular government,” said Daniel BĂ©land, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s also bad public policy, at least from a fiscal standpoint.”
Trudeau, who has confirmed he will lead his party into the next election, faces the prospect of becoming the first Canadian prime minister in over a century to fail to win four consecutive terms. The election must be called by October 2024, though it could come as early as this fall.
The son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who rode a wave of liberal resurgence to power in 2015 after nearly a decade of Conservative rule, now faces widespread public frustration over post-pandemic economic challenges. The latest Nanos poll of 1,047 respondents shows the depth of his political challenges, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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