Liberal Tax Cuts? Not Quite

I read a Liberal party pamphlet the other day titled, 'Empower the Middle Class'.

Below it was a picture of Justin Trudeau and the Minister of Finance Bill Morneau in Wonder Twins costumes tagging each other's fists shouting, 'Middle Class powers ACTIVATE!'

Let's delve right into a couple of the claims made in the brochure.

-Since December 2015, Canada's unemployment rate has decreased from 7.1% to 6.6%

This is true. Except, the rate was at around 6.5% when the Liberal came into power, spiked up and then went back down albeit to its lowest rate since 2008.

The historic national average since 1966 is 7.7%.

Which ties into....

-The Canadian economy, has created close to 250 000 jobs in the past 7 months.

Good news: This probably helped to reduce unemployment. Bad news: those were mostly part-time jobs.

In addition but no less important, Canada's anemic growth rates are well below 1% which puts it in-line with the EU area. The United States are posting stronger growth numbers but can still do better.

It will be interesting to see how this changes once the Liberal spending budget kicks into high gear. Not to mention their plans to remove income splitting in the 2017 budget.

-The other claim is the tax rate was cut from 22.5% to 20.5% claiming it 'will result in about $3.4 billion in annual tax relief.

Except those cuts are offset by increases in CPP contributions. In fact, whatever 'savings' garnered from the tax cuts are surpassed by CPP taxes. 

So we actually don't benefit from tax cuts.

As if the Liberals would put money in your pockets. Besides, it runs contrary to their tax and spend budget. 

It all ends up adding up to one reality: You won't be richer than you think under Trudeau's Liberals. 

And you shouldn't be surprised.