Even though the Liberals are likely on their way out of office, they can still do significant damage in the time they have left.
Canadian entrepreneurs are already being pushed out of the country due to the capital gains tax hike, according to Allen Lau – former CEO of Wattpad.
As reported by BNNBloomberg, Wattpad says “we are giving our grand prize away to foreign investors”:
“Higher taxes means less capital available, diminishing ownership and less economic benefit, period,” said Lau. As a tech venture capitalist investing in Canadian companies, he said the firm is hearing a lot of anger from the start-up community.
“Canadians should own a significant piece of great Canadian companies. But now we are giving away our grand prize to foreign investors,” said Lau. “A lot of times, my VC company is the only Canadian investor in Canadian startups.”
Canada could also be squandering our potential advantage in AI:
“This is a five-alarm fire situation,” said Lau. “We have seen entrepreneurs already packing up. I even learned of a Canadian venture fund that plans to pack up and go,” he said, citing an unnamed VC. “This is not an empty threat; this is really real for Canada.”
“We are incredible at AI research. The problem is we are not benefiting commercially or economically from it,” said Lau. “Tech entrepreneurs are in the best position to solve this productivity crisis.”
Clearly, the Liberals have things completely backward. As I wrote in the article below, Canada should be encouraging wealthy Canadians, not demonizing them. We need the best of the best to want to stay in Canada and generate wealth, and the capital gains tax hike does the exact opposite:
Spencer Fernando
