introduce the Culture Pass, a $200 credit that every Canadian child will receive when they turn 12, to be used to access theatres, museums, galleries, workshops, and other cultural venues and local Canadian content;

continue to support Canadian film by increasing annual funding for Telefilm Canada by nearly 50 per cent a year;

review our national museums policy to make sure that people can access Canadian history across the country, with better access to digital collections; and will move forward with making the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Heritage Centre into a national museum

introduce a new Cultural Diplomacy strategy, with at least one international mission each year to promote Canadian culture and creators around the world; and

move forward, in our first year, with legislation that will take appropriate measures to ensure that all content providers – including internet giants – offer meaningful levels of Canadian content in their catalogues, contribute to the creation of Canadian content in both official languages, and promote this content and make it easily accessible on their platforms.

From Forward, retrieved 2019-09-30.

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To give every Canadian child the chance to learn how to camp by the time they reach grade eight, we will move forward with expanding the successful Learn to Camp program. This will make it possible for 400,000 kids each year to learn basic camping skills.

To make sure that our National Parks are accessible to all families no matter their economic circumstances, we will also move forward with giving 75,000 less privileged children and their families an up to four-night trip to one of Canada’s national or provincial parks.

This will include camping accommodations and a travel bursary of up to $2,000 so that families can more easily afford a once-in-a-lifetime trip to more national parks, like Banff, Forillon, Gros Morne, and the Cape Breton Highlands.

We will also partner with VIA Rail to make these opportunities accessible and affordable for more families.

From Forward, retrieved 2019-09-30.

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We will also move forward with Guaranteed Paid Family Leave – an ambitious program that will make sure that parents who don’t qualify for paid leave through Employment Insurance, or who don’t get enough because they’re between jobs, earn little, or haven’t worked enough hours, will receive a guaranteed income during the first year of their child’s life. This will be especially helpful for women, who typically carry more family responsibilities, and will mean that every single Canadian parent will be able to afford to spend the first year at home with their child, when it matters most.

Residents of Quebec will receive a comparable benefit for the portion of federal taxes they pay aspart (sic) of the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan, and we will ensure that Guaranteed Paid Family Leave is integrated effectively with Quebec’s provincial parental benefits system, which the province will continue to run itself.

From Forward, retrieved 2019-10-01.

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A New Democrat government will enhance the Action Plan for Official Languages to improve access to services in the language of choice, including working with the provinces and territories to improve minority language education, and attract more French-speaking immigrants to communities all across the country.

We’ll also modernize the Official Languages Act to strengthen oversight and accountability, expand the scope of language rights, and ensure that minority language communities are consulted on decisions that impact them. New Democrats will make sure that Canadians can access justice in their language of choice, and that judges on the Supreme Court are bilingual.

These efforts will happen alongside our commitment to the promotion and revitalization of Indigenous languages – recognizing that honouring Canada’s linguistic heritage must include reconciliation.

From A New Deal for People, retrieved 2019-09-22.

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To protect and promote the rights of minority-language communities, we will move forward with:

modernizing the 50-year-old Official Languages Act, including making Radio-Canada’s mandate for regional news part of the Act, and making sure that Air Canada provides fully bilingual services to its customers;

reviewing and strengthening the powers of the Commissioner of Official Languages;

appointing only bilingual judges to the Supreme Court of Canada; and

undertaking an enumeration of rights-holders and a thorough post-census survey to better account for – and better serve – minority-language communities.

Canada’s two official languages should be reflected not only in institutions but in the ability of people to speak and understand each other in both languages. To encourage more people to learn a second language, we will move forward with:

working with the provinces and territories to ensure that all Canadians can access secondlanguage (sic) programs, like immersion, in their local schools if they choose to do so;

new investments to help train, recruit and attract teachers in both immersion and second-language programs, based on new targets set by the provinces and territories;

developing and promoting new opportunities for language and cultural exchanges; and

investing an additional $60 million to help build the infrastructure that supports strong minority-language communities, including schools and cultural centres.

And to help the more than 600,000 Francophones in Ontario better access post-secondary education, we will move forward with the province to help establish the Université de l’Ontario français.

From Forward, retrieved 2019-09-30.

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[...] a New Democrat government will focus on improving access to in-person services in northern and rural communities. In order to make our rural and northern communities safer, and to recognize the selfless work of our volunteer emergency responders, we’ll also expand the Volunteer Firefighters Tax Credit and ensure that federal funding for rural and First Nations policing is made available in a fair, predictable, and sustainable way.

In many rural areas, simple things like going to the bank have become complicated and difficult. Despite record profits, financial institutions are closing rural branches and cutting services in more and more communities every year. It’s clear that we need to find other ways to deliver these important financial services. Today, almost 1,200 rural communities in Canada have a post office but no financial services. That’s why a New Democrat government will work with Canada Post to develop a model of postal banking that will help nearly two million Canadians access more affordable, quality banking services where none are currently available.

Travel is a necessity of life in rural Canada and it should be easier to get around without putting a dent in the family budget. But instead of improving rural tranist services, the lack of funding and coordination under this Liberal government has made the situation worse. Combined with Greyhound’s route cancellations, too many communities have been left stranded without reliable transportation services.

New Democrats believe that every community in Canada should be able to count on reliable transit to connect them to their jobs, health care services, schools, and family members. That’s why we’ll work with the provinces, territories, and Indigenous communities to grow affordable transit services for rural areas, including restoring cancelled bus services in Western Canada, expanding bus service into East Kootenay, restarting the Ontario Northlander train, and much more to keep our communities connected.

Staying connected digitally is more essential than ever, yet too many rural communities in Canada don’t have reliable cell phone or broadband service. A New Democrat government will change that by delivering high-speed rural broadband to all communities in Canada without delay and ensuring that reliable cell phone service is expanded to every area of Canada, while keeping rates affordable for families and businesses.

Rural Canada drives at least a third of the country’s economy, but successive Liberal and Conservative governments have missed the opportunity to develop these regions to their full potential. A New Democrat government will invest in regional economic development agencies and provide economic support for rural areas to invest in job creation in areas like tourism and community development.

Many northern, rural, and remote communities are working hard to retain families, attract workers, and stop out-migration but they can’t do it alone. That’s why New Democrats will put in place a new tax credit for graduates to work in designated rural and northern communities, and make it easier for employers to hire and retain the workers they need.

To make all of Canada’s communities sustainable for the long term, we need to change how we build them. Rural communities need fair access to federal infrastructure and transit funds, and more help to prepare for and deal with the increasingly severe impacts of climate change. New Democrats will work with provinces to put in place a new deal for rural infrastructure programs that provide long-term predictable funding for communities. And we’ll increase the amount of help the federal government provides to communities to adapt to climate change and rebuild when disasters happen. We’ll make sure that affordable housing investments go to rural communities, too, and that federal infrastructure dollars flow now to create good local jobs that stay in the community.

From A New Deal for People, retrieved 2019-09-22.

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We will lead a National Seniors Strategy that will work with the provinces, territories, and Indigenous governments to make seniors health care a priority, reduce isolation, and tackle seniors’ poverty. This will include a funded national dementia strategy and an elder abuse prevention plan developed with seniors to put an end to abuse and neglect in our communities.

Our national pharmacare for all plan will provide prescription medicine to all seniors, saving seniors hundreds of dollars every year and ensuring that no one needs to choose between medicine and other essentials.

Seniors deserve a retirement that’s financially secure and dignified. And no senior should miss out on benefits they qualify for because of a paperwork oversight – but that’s exactly what’s happening to tens of thousands of seniors today. We’ll put in place a one-year delay to help seniors at risk of having their GIS benefits suspended for being unable to make the required income statement.

Many seniors are themselves caregivers to a loved one, or rely on the caregiving of family members. In order to help make life a little more affordable for caregivers, who are overwhelmingly women, we’ll make the Canada Caregiver Tax Credit refundable. This will provide thousands of dollars to the most low-income caregivers, many of whom have given up work completely to care for a loved one.

Every senior should have a safe and affordable place to call home. Our commitment to create half a million affordable housing units in the next decade will include accessible housing that will increase choices for seniors. We’ll also support connection to community and tackle seniors’ isolation by working with cities to make transit more affordable and convenient, create more community recreation spaces, and support innovative housing solutions like intergenerational co-housing.

From A New Deal for People, retrieved 2019-09-22.

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Support innovative home-sharing plans and other measures to allow people to stay in their own homes as long as possible. Create more long-term care beds in neighbourhood facilities.

From Election Platform 2019, retrieved 2019-09-22.

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Since the Age Credit is income-tested, it will benefit low to middle income seniors. With this measure, an individual aged 65 could receive up to $150 more per year and a couple could receive up to $300 more per year.

From Andrew Scheer will give more support to seniors, retrieved 2019-10-08.

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To boost the integrity of our tax system and combat tax evasion, we will take measures to close loopholes that include eliminating bearer shares, compelling companies to prove the economic reason for their offshore transactions, and improving transparency on the taxes paid by large corporations.

A New Democrat government will ensure that large, profitable corporations are contributing to the important services and infrastructure that make Canada such a good place to do business. We will roll back the Conservatives’ corporate income tax cuts by three percentage points to 2010 levels.

To make our tax system fairer and ensure that the wealthiest individuals are paying their fair share, we will increase the capital gains inclusion rate to 75 percent. A New Democrat government will also boost the top marginal tax rate and ask the very richest multi-millionaires to pay a bit more towards our shared services with a new 1 percent wealth tax on wealth over $20 million.

From A New Deal for People, retrieved 2019-09-22.

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Establish an arm’s length Federal Tax Commission to analyze the tax system for fairness and accessibility, based on the principle of progressive taxation. The last Tax Commission was in the 1960s, so reform is long overdue. This will include recommending an appropriate way to tax cryptocurrencies.

Close tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy. The stock option loophole is one of the most expensive and unfair tax loopholes. Executives with stock options as part of their remuneration package only pay half the rate of income tax on this portion of their income. The capital gains loophole allows people and corporations to only add half of their capital gains to their taxable income, while those with only employment income pay taxes on their entire income. Over 90 per cent of the value of this tax break goes to the richest 10 per cent, and about 85 per cent goes to the top one per cent.

End offshore tax dodging by taxing funds hidden in offshore havens and requiring companies to prove that their foreign affiliates are actual functioning businesses for tax purposes. Provide adequate funding to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to collect tax revenue hiding in offshore tax havens. Several Auditors General have recommended that the CRA should focus on people who hide vast wealth, rather than conduct random audits of ordinary Canadians.

Apply a corporate tax on transnational e-commerce companies doing business in Canada by requiring the foreign vendor to register, collect and remit taxes where the product or service is consumed. The e-commerce sector – giants like Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Uber command a significant share of the Canadian market but pay virtually no tax.

Impose a financial transactions tax of 0.2 per cent in the finance sector as France has done since 2012.

Eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies, including payments and tax write-offs, valued at several billion dollars annually. These include the accelerated capital cost allowance on liquefied natural gas (LNG) and tax write-offs for oil and gas wells, coal mining exploration and development, flow-through share deductions for coal, oil and gas projects, and oil and gas properties. Despite a promise 10 years ago to eliminate subsidies to fossil fuel companies, these subsidies have actually expanded for fracking and LNG development.

Increase the federal corporate tax rate from 15 to 21 per cent to bring it into line with the federal rate in the United States, our biggest trading partner. Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada, said corporations are holding “hundreds of billions of dollars in their bank accounts,” rather than reinvesting in the economy. This dead money needs to be mobilized for the transition to a green, renewable economy.

Maintain the current level of taxation for small business.

Charge a five per cent surtax on commercial bank profits. Commercial banks accumulate huge profits – $43.15 billion for the five largest banks in 2018 alone. {{{toMarkdown}}}18{{{toMarkdown}}} . Credit unions, caisses populaires and co-ops will be exempt.

Prohibit Canadian businesses from deducting the cost of advertising on foreign-owned sites such as Google and Facebook which now account for 80 per cent of all spending on advertising Canada.

Eliminate the 50 per cent corporate meals and entertainment expense deduction, which includes season tickets and private boxes at sporting events.

Increase the tax credit for volunteer firefighters and search and rescue volunteers.

From Election Platform 2019, retrieved 2019-09-22.

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undertake a new comprehensive review of government spending and tax expenditures, to ensure that wealthy Canadians do not benefit from unfair tax breaks (a similar review, which we committed to in 2015, identified more than $3 billion a year that could be reinvested in the middle class);

moderniz e (sic) anti-avoidance rules to stop large multinational companies from being able to shop for lower tax rates by constructing complex schemes between countries;

crack down on corporate tax loopholes that allow companies to excessively deduct debt to artificially reduce the tax they pay;

introduce a new 10 per cent tax on luxury cars, boats, and personal aircraft over $100,000; and

make sure that multinational tech giants pay corporate tax on the revenue they generate in Canada. We will also work to achieve the standard set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to ensure that international digital corporations whose products are consumed in Canada collect and remit the same level of sales taxation as Canadian digital corporations.

From Forward, retrieved 2019-09-30.

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