HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ‘s government announced plans Thursday to temporarily lift the federal sales tax off a number of items and send checks to millions of Canadians who are dealing with rising costs and as a federal election looms.
The measures come as a cost of living crisis has left voters unhappy with Trudeau and ahead of an election that could come anytime between this fall and next October.
“Our government can’t set prices at the checkout, but we can put more money in people’s pockets,” Trudeau said at a press conference in Toronto.
Under the plan, Canadians who worked in 2023 and earned up to 150,000 Canadian dollars (US$ 107,440) will receive a check for 250 Canadian dollars. Trudeau noted that even those earning at the high end of that amount have been struggling to get by.
An estimated 18.7 million Canadians will receive the one-time check.
The federal goods and services tax break would begin Dec. 14 and end Feb. 15.
The government said the tax break will apply to a number of items including children’s clothing and shoes, toys, diapers, restaurant meals, beer and wine. It also applies to Christmas trees, a variety of snack foods and beverages and video game consoles.
Opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called the announcement a “two month temporary tax trick” that won’t make up for carbon taxes that are set to go up.
Trudeau has said he will lead his Liberal Party into the next election. No Canadian prime minister in more than a century has won four straight terms.
Trudeau channeled the star power of his father in 2015 when he reasserted the country’s liberal identity in 2015 after almost 10 years of Conservative rule. But the son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau is now in trouble. Canadians have been frustrated by the cost of living coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Liberals trail the opposition Conservatives 39% to 26% in the latest Nanos poll. The poll of 1,047 respondents has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
“Politically, it’s probably too little too late and it feels like a desperate move on the part of an unpopular government,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal. “It’s also bad public policy, at least from a fiscal standpoint.”