Cars, the future of energy and the Saguenay: how politics mattered this week
OTTAWA — Any hope the Liberals had of a quiet Thanksgiving break melted away quickly this week, even with MPs back in their ridings and all the party leaders politicking in distant places.
The hullabaloo over the government’s tax proposals degenerated into a head-scratcher, with the governing party having to revise, re-explain and eventually retract an obscure tax change on retail employees’ benefits that suddenly grabbed the public’s interest.
After weeks of loud criticism over measures to crack down on the personal use of private corporations in order to pay lower taxes, news of the retail employees tax landed hard. The Liberals blamed the civil service at first, then moved to cancel it outright.
While it’s still unclear whether slivers of that measure still exist, it is clear the government’s credibility on tax policy is under some intense pressure — coming to a head on Monday when Finance Minister Bill Morneau will appeal to Liberal MPs to support a rejigged tax-reform package that he hopes will be less contentious.