Yakabuski: Instead of importing millionaires, Canada needs to produce more of them

Good comments on citizenship-by-investment programs:

…If it is the latter, then Canadians might have reason to be concerned. Mr. Hunt’s budget move aside, countries around the world have been bending over backward to attract high-net-worth immigrants from China, India and other emerging countries (and high-tax developed ones) by fast-tracking their citizenship or providing lucrative tax breaks.

Canada used to do that, too. In 2014, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper scrapped the 28-year-old federal Immigrant Investor Program, after concluding that “most immigrant investors [were] not making a long-term positive contribution to Canada.”…

Perhaps the lesson here is that, instead of importing millionaires, maybe Canada needs to do a better job at producing them. Raising the capital-gains tax inclusion rate, as Ottawa’s latest budget proposes, will not help do that. If the critics are right, it could even prompt some of our existing millionaires to leave.

Source: Instead of importing millionaires, Canada needs to produce more of them