Poilievre faces a squeeze on capital gains tax issue

Liberal move a play to undercut Tories for working-class votes

- STEPHANIE LEVITZ

Though Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has railed against the capital gains tax regime before, he has also suggested rich Canadians skate too easily through tax loopholes.

During his early days on Parliament Hill, well before he was leader of the Conservative party, Pierre Poilievre helped organize a summer tour to promote the Reform party's promise to abolish the capital gains tax - the bite the government takes out of the profits on the sale of certain assets.

He'd spoken out against the tax even before that; in an essay written when he was a teenager about what he'd do if he was prime minister, he said he'd get rid of it, reportedly using the phrase "I would free the eagle from its cage" to describe his drive to abolish it.

But on Tuesday comes a potential test of whether he maintains those convictions: a vote in the House of Commons on the governing Liberals' plan not to abolish the capital gains regime, but to make it so certain people actually pay more.

Squeezing the Conservatives into a corner on this subject has been a clear political objective for the Liberals since they introduced the measure in this year's federal budget. They didn't include it in the broader budget bill explicitly to create a stand-alone piece of parliamentary business that would force a stand-alone vote.

Why? A political play to undercut Conservatives for the votes of working-class Canadians.