Gad Saad said he is leaving Canada after a difficult meeting with his accountant showed him what the exit tax would cost. The Concordia University professor and author said on X on Thursday night that the bill left him "genuinely numb" and "speechless."
"Following a very difficult meeting with my accountant, I just found out how much it is going to cost me," he wrote. He added: "No human being in a free society should have their hard-earned money stolen in this manner. I’m genuinely numb. I’m speechless."
Quebec and Canada departure tax
The exit tax, also called a departure tax, applies when a person becomes a non-resident of Canada. David Rotfleisch, a tax lawyer and chartered accountant at Rotfleisch and Samulovitch in Toronto, said it is "a bit of a misnomer." He said: "It’s payable when you become a non-resident of Canada, and it’s one of the deemed dispositions under the Income Tax Act."
Rotfleisch said a deemed disposition means "a legal fiction," and that the CRA collects tax on accrued capital gain when a person dies. He said the exit tax is another deemed disposition, but on departure. That means the charge is tied to assets with unrealized gains at the moment a resident leaves Canada, not to income earned after the move.
Antisemitism and family safety
Saad said two things are pushing him out of Canada: rising antisemitism and a tax system that makes it nearly impossible to save enough to retire. He also said the government’s immigration policies have made Canada unsafe for his family as Jewish Canadians.
Kim Moody, founder of Moodys Private Client in Calgary and a writer for the Financial Post, was among the tax specialists who discussed the departure tax. Their explanation puts Saad’s complaint into sharper focus: the rule can turn a move out of Canada into an immediate tax bill, even before any cash is sold or spent.
Gad Saad and the final bill
Saad has not said the amount he was quoted, but he did say the meeting with his accountant changed the calculation from an abstract rule into a personal cost. His description of the bill as money being stolen clashes with Rotfleisch’s view that the tax is simply a legal fiction built into the Income Tax Act.
For readers facing the same rule, the key step is to identify whether their departure would make them a non-resident of Canada, because that status change is what triggers the tax. Saad’s case shows how a departure tax can become part of the decision to leave, not just the paperwork that follows it.
