We would appear, as Woody Allen once said, to stand at a crossroads: “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other to total extinction.” (“Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”)
That, at any rate, is what one would gather from the rhetoric over the government’s capital-gains tax proposal. On the one hand, according to the Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, the measure – an increase in the share of capital gains subject to tax from 50 per cent to 66 per cent, though only (for personal income tax payers) on gains in excess of $250,000 – is all that stands between us and, if not total extinction, then certainly despair and utter hopelessness.
