Canadian industry has lost hundreds of billions worth of investment funds to red tape, which is the greatest barrier to attracting foreign investment, says Pierre Poilievre, while noting the country has to reform its tax system to retain the workforce that investors and businesses need.
Speaking to reporters on Oct. 30 at his first press conference as the Leader of the Conservative Party, Poilievre addressed a question about how Canada can attract more affluent investors from around the world.
“I think the problem we have in attracting investment from anywhere around the world is [Canada] is becoming a very difficult place to get anything built,” he said.
“So we have Canadians invest $800 billion more abroad than the world invests in Canada. That’s almost a trillion dollars that we’re pushing out of our country that is building factories and pipelines and mines in other places with paycheques for other people.”
He attributed this to red tape, giving the example of the difficulty in getting building permits in Canada compared to other members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
“We are the second-slowest place in the world to get a building permit. It takes on average—you take the average building permit time for everything from a house to a mine—it’s 250 days in Canada. In South Korea, it’s 28 days,” he said. “Only the Slovak Republic is slower than Canada in the entire OECD.”
‘Gatekeeping Policies’
High taxes and the cost of living are other impediments for foreign investors to come to Canada, Poilievre said.“We need to reform our tax system so that it rewards investment in our country,” he said.
“We need to get our workforce back. Our system punishes our young people for working with high taxes and clawbacks. We need to change it so that we reward work, so that there’s investment opportunities that build opportunity here in this country.”
Poilievre’s remarks were echoed by shadow finance minister Jasraj Singh Hallan, who also attended the press conference.
“Canada is not as competitive as it once was,” he said. “People don’t want to come here anymore because of the cost of living. ... When businesses are looking at Canada, they do look at cost structure.”
Hallan pointed to the Liberal government’s increase of payroll taxes scheduled to go into effect in January 2023, which he said will also diminish Canada’s ability to attract or retain workers.
“If taxes are so high, we’re not going to get workers either—even if investment was coming here,” he said.
“People will hear about different countries and where they can save the most money. And when you hear that Canada—you don’t keep as much as you make, and it’s only going to get less and less after these tax increases—it makes Canada less and less competitive on a world market.”
“It’s those gatekeeping policies and the gatekeepers that prevent good investment,” he added, “and whatever good investment we did have has been fleeing away because of them.”
The study noted that once the payroll tax increase is fully implemented by 2025, up to 98.8 percent of Canada’s middle-income families with children (with incomes ranging from $77,839 to $110,201) will pay higher taxes. On average, they will be paying $2,260 more tax each year, it said.
“I think that we should have a free enterprise system, where workers, businesses, and customers make their own decisions based on the price signals that exist,” Poilievre said. “The free market is the system of voluntary exchange between work for wages, investment for interest, and product for payment.”
He noted that the central planning approach is no match for the free market system.
“Governments that try to run the economy by force always leave people in desperate poverty.”
