| Historical Information |
|---|
| This post is about a previous Session of Parliament. Any legislation here that did not receive Royal Assent has been terminated. |
C-78 – the Tax Break for All Canadians Act – removes the GST from a number of products for the holidays.
So this is the legislation that made the GST holiday I’m sure you’ve all heard about. The GST break runs from December 14, 2024 to February 15, 2025 and is mostly focused on child care products and things you’d probably want for the holidays. Items on the list are:
- Alcohol
- Printed books
- Audiobooks
- Children’s car seats
- Children’s clothing
- Children’s diapers
- Children’s footwear
- Newspapers
- Artificial and natural Christmas trees
- Board and card games
- Toys/dolls/etc
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Video games, but not digital copies of them
- Video game consoles and controllers
- Prepared food (sandwiches, food platters, etc) and snacks (chips, candy, etc)
- Non-alcoholic drinks
- Food purchased at restaurants
Note that this all only applies if the item is purchased in whole during the break. If you buy something on a payment plan and won’t finish the payments before the GST break ends you don’t get the break.
Party Opinions
Liberals
The Liberals, of course, say this will help make the holidays cheaper for Canadians. They also make a point I hadn’t thought of, that including restaurants in this break should help boost business for them during the January slowdown.
NDP
The NDP support this break, but don’t like how temporary it is. They’d rather see a permanent removal of the GST from monthly bills like phone bills and essentials. They also aren’t happy that the Liberals weren’t going with the second part of what an NDP GST plan would be, which is making up for the loss of income by taxing excess profits on large companies.
Conservatives
The Conservatives are against the break, saying that it won’t help businesses nor will it help affordability. They want to have a Carbon Tax ElectionTM instead.
Bloc Québécois
The Bloc are against the break on the grounds that it doesn’t help people that are really struggling. Basic groceries are already tax exempt while things like heating bills aren’t affected by this. They mention that you could save a lot of money on a nice expensive bottle of wine thanks to the GST break, which feels like it’s a break on luxury items instead of essentials. They also aren’t happy about the lack of communication with provincial governments about it. Provinces with an HST weren’t consulted on it, and there’s a bit of a unique issue in Quebec caused by this. Apparently Revenue Quebec collects the GST there, and are compensated by the feds for doing so, but it sounds like there won’t be any compensation during the break as it won’t be collected. (Which means there’s going to be people on the payroll not doing any work).
Progress of C-78
Time allocation and speeding up the process
So obviously C-78 was on a bit of a tight schedule if it was going to pass before the holidays, and things in the House were somewhat bogged down. So one of the first things that happened with it was Karina Gould (Liberal, Ontario, Burlington) proposed a Motion to limit how much time could be spent debating it. She also wanted to expedite the legislation, having one vote to count for its Second Reading, committee investigation, and Third Reading.
Andréanne Larouche (Bloc Québécois, Quebec, Shefford) wanted to amend this Motion by instead sending C-78 to the Standing Committee on Finance, having them look into it and speak to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance on the impacts of it.
Andréanne’s amendment went up for a vote and failed with 153 in favour and 176 opposed.
| Party | For | Against | Paired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 1 | 150 | 1 |
| Conservative | 118 | 0 | 0 |
| Bloc Quebecois | 30 | 0 | 1 |
| NDP | 0 | 25 | 0 |
| Green | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Independent | 2 | 1 | 0 |
Worth noting that the Liberal that voted in favour of sending C-78 to committee was Yvonne Jones (Liberal, Newfoundland and Labrador, Labrador).
The Time Allocation motion then went up for a vote and passed with 174 in favour and 148 opposed.
| Party | For | Against | Paired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | 147 | 0 | 1 |
| Conservative | 0 | 116 | 0 |
| Bloc Quebecois | 0 | 30 | 1 |
| NDP | 24 | 0 | 0 |
| Green | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Independent | 1 | 2 | 0 |
C-78 then went up for its one and only vote and passed with the same vote split.
As I’m sure we’re all aware of by now, it then quickly got pushed through the Senate without amendment and was granted Royal Assent.
Discover more from Commons Sense
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.