No More Handouts
To The Elites
While working Canadian families in Mission—Matsqui struggle to afford groceries, keep up with rent and mortgages, and access healthcare, Ottawa has been handing out billions to elites that don't need it, fossil fuel giants that gouge us at the pump, tech corporations that harvest our data and make billions selling it, and automakers that take hundreds of millions in public money and lay off thousands of workers anyway. These are transfers of wealth from the middle class to the elites that have spent decades hollowing it out.
Over the last thirty years, corporate subsidies have ballooned from $3.8 billion in 1994 to more than $40.8 billion in 2025. Over that same period, we lost more than a quarter of all manufacturing jobs, drained our resources, and siphoned the wealth out of our country.
The more wealth concentrated in the hands of fewer, the more political capital is concentrated with it, and that capital bleeds into our institutions, corrupts and erodes them, and concentrates more power in fewer hands with every passing year. It is time to end corporate welfare, tax the ultra-rich, and ensure Canada's wealth remains in Canada, and in the hands of the working Canadians who create it.
“Welfare is for the
needy, not big and wealthy
multi-national corporations.”
—David Lewis, 1972
End All Fossil Fuel Subsidies
In 2009, the Conservative government promised to end fossil fuel subsidies. In 2015, the Liberals promised the same. And again, in 2019, and in 2021. Yet year after year, the government doles out more and more to these already profitable corporations. However, these corporations aren’t just profitable; they’re extracting our wealth and sending it south: the four corporations that own 80 per cent of our oil sands are 73 per cent foreign-owned, including 60 per cent American-owned. Between 2021 and 2024, they paid out $79.7 billion in dividends and buybacks, $58 billion of which went to foreign shareholders, including $49.4 billion which went to their U.S. shareholders; that's an average of nearly $15 billion per year leaving the country. Yet according to Environmental Defence, over this same period, the federal government doled out $74.6 billion in subsidies to oil and gas corporations in Canada. In 2025, they handed out another $10.2 billion in direct subsidies and public financing. New Democrats are calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies once and for all: no phase-out period, no grandfathering in, no weaselling out. The fossil fuel industry is among the most profitable on earth; they do not need your tax dollars.
Community Benefit Agreements as a Condition of Public Investment
When the federal government does invest public money in a private business, working Canadians deserve a guaranteed return. That’s why we’re demanding binding Community Benefit Agreements as a condition of any federal subsidy to large businesses, mandating union membership, apprenticeship training, wage floors, environmental commitments, and local hiring. If a corporation wants public money, they answer to the public.
A Wealth Tax on the Ultra-Rich
88 per cent of Canadians across party lines support a wealth tax, yet Liberals and Conservatives have refused to implement it. Rather than taxing the wealthiest Canadians, they continue to gut the public services working families rely on, while their donors amass trillions. The richest 1 per cent in Canada hold nearly $3.9 trillion in wealth, almost as much as the bottom 80 per cent of Canadians combined. That wealth was extracted from the wages, rents, and grocery bills of working Canadians, and concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. That’s why New Democrats are fighting for a wealth tax of 1 per cent on net wealth above $10 million, 2 per cent above $50 million, and 3 per cent above $100 million, generating $40 billion per year to invest in the public services working families depend on.
Close The Capital Gains Loophole And Introduce An Inheritance Tax
When working Canadians do their taxes, 100 per cent of their income is taxed. When a wealthy investor sells a property or cashes in stock options, only 50 per cent of that income is taxed. The capital gains income that flows to the wealthiest Canadians from stocks, real estate, and investments is more than twice as concentrated at the top of the income distribution as employment income. The top 1 per cent of earners receive roughly 30 per cent of all capital gains in Canada. 40 per cent of Canadian MPs have personal investments in the housing market, meaning they’re personally positioned to benefit from the same tax treatment they are refusing to change. Taxing capital gains at the same rate as employment income, with exemptions for farms, fisheries, small businesses, and primary residences, would raise an additional $11 billion per year, while an inheritance tax of 45 per cent on estates above $5 million would generate over $2 billion annually, reducing the generational concentration of wealth that is making Canada less equal with every passing decade. That’s why New Democrats are pushing to treat capital gains the same as employment income.
End Tax Havens And Fund The CRA
Every year, income hidden in offshore tax havens costs Canadians $15 billion in lost revenue, money that could've been funding healthcare, housing, and public services. The wealthiest Canadians amass their wealth on the backs of hardworking Canadians, yet when our public services are crumbling, they siphon the wealth created by working people out of the country and into offshore accounts. According to Statistics Canada, Canadian corporations and wealthy individuals hold more than $380 billion in assets in known tax haven jurisdictions. The most common destinations are Barbados, the Cayman Islands, and Luxembourg, countries with no meaningful business activity that happen to have treaty arrangements with Canada that allow profits to flow there untaxed. That's why we’re calling to end all tax agreements with known tax havens, require companies to have a genuine business case for foreign subsidiaries, and front-load funding to the CRA to hire hundreds of new auditors focused on corporations and wealthy individuals. For every dollar invested in the CRA, taxpayers make four dollars back. It's the most straightforward investment in public services this country can make.
Reinstate the Digital Services Tax
The cancellation of the Digital Services Tax handed Big Tech billions in avoided taxes, a capitulation to U.S. tech elites. Before it was cancelled, the Digital Services Tax was projected to raise $7.2 billion over five years from corporations like Google, Meta, and Amazon that rake in billions annually from Canadian users, Canadian content, and Canadian data, while paying a fraction of what a Canadian business of comparable size would pay in taxes. The government cancelled it under American political pressure. New Democrats are fighting to reinstate it immediately. If you want to do business in Canada, you pay taxes in Canada.