Poor Dino Ari. According to Conservative leader Stephen Harper, the Ontario pizzeria owner faces a serious cash-crunch if the Liberals form government.
Ari owns Dino’s Wood-burning Pizza and employs six people. Harper — who has taken to demonstrating the alleged cost of Liberal policies with the help of legal tender and sound effects (CHA-CHING!) — told a rally in Etobicoke on Tuesday that Ari would pay an additional $5,500 per year toward employment insurance premiums and the Canada Pension Plan under a Liberal government.
“The annual amount Dino has to contribute to EI for his employees would go up by about $560,” Harper said.
Cue $560 in cash plunked down, $20 at a time, on a table next to the Conservative leader.
Harper then explained that under the Liberal plan, Ari would have to pay another $3,700 into CPP for his employees.
“Dino is also an employee of the company, so he pays increased CPP taxes as the employer and the employee, which will cost him another $1,235.”
Is Harper’s math correct?
In terms of employment insurance, the numbers check out. But what Harper did not explain was that both the Conservatives and the Liberals have pledged to reduce the current EI rate of $1.88 per $100 — just not by the same amount. The Liberals have pledged to cut it to $1.65 per $100, while the Conservatives have committed to slicing the rate to $1.49 per $100 in 2017.
The rate applies to maximum insurable earnings ($50,800 for 2016). When you do the math, the Liberal cut would indeed leave the contribution for each employee $81.28 higher than the Conservative cut. Multiply that by seven (for Ari and his six employees), and you get $568.96. Keep in mind, however, that the Conservative’s rate reduction wouldn’t be in place until 2017.
READ MORE: Do the Liberal campaign promises add up?
Canada Pension Plan
According to the Conservative campaign, the additional money for CPP contributions is based on the assumption that the Liberals would increase CPP premiums by 1.9 per cent for both the employer and the employee (or 3.8 per cent total), mirroring Ontario’s pension plan model. That, in turn, is based on a quote from Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau in May. Trudeau said that his party would examine “a mandatory expansion of the CPP, of the type that Kathleen Wynne put forward in Ontario.”
The Liberals have not provided firm numbers for their proposed CPP expansion plan in the months since Trudeau made those comments, so it’s impossible to know if Ari would pay as much as Harper claims.
What about families?
Earlier in the week, in his first Price-Is-Right style presentation, Harper claimed the Liberals will end up denying a family with three children (the Ropps) $8,000 worth of government support each year.
Harper said, for example, that the Liberals would “cancel child care cheques for some families … That’s nearly $2,000 per year per child under the age of six and over $700 for children between 6 and 17, gone.”
The Conservative leader missed the other side of the equation in this instance. The Liberals are proposing to do away with the existing universal child care benefit, but have said they will replace it with a new monthly tax-free child benefit. The new benefit would be dependent on family income and be gradually phased out for those earning more than $150,000.
When it comes to income splitting, the Liberals have said they will scrap it for parents because evidence suggests the program only benefits the richest 15 per cent of families. Harper attacked that position, saying it would cost the Ropp family $2,000 per year. The Liberals are not, as Conservative advertisements have suggested, planning to cancel income-splitting for seniors.
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