There are many reasons, but to the question you posed to the other witnesses, Jim Stanford had a report from the Centre for Future Work that came out recently and showed that in Canada, there are only 40,000 people who declare over $250,000 in capital gains every year. That is 40,000 Canadians. These are the folks who are most directly impacted by this change. We are talking about the wealthiest Canadians who are being impacted, so to claim this is something that's going to directly touch middle-class Canadians—like teachers, for example—is really just not based in reality. We're talking about people who already have access to capital, and that capital is making more than $250,000 in capital gains. We are talking about wealthy folks.
Obviously there are situations in which people make a one-time gain, so not everybody who is going to be impacted is going to be as wealthy as me, and I understand that, but this policy appears to me to be targeted towards folks who are already doing much better than the average Canadian.
Let's not forget the context in which we live, where a lot of people are really struggling with housing and with grocery costs. This is not only a gap between the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor; a lot of people who work for a living and who have good jobs also are being impacted by housing prices, grocery prices and all kinds of increasing costs.
I really am very strongly of the opinion that this is impacting mostly the very rich.