OTTAWA—Andrew Scheer’s campaign says it altered an image purported to be a Liberal party policy proposal for the sake of “brevity,” but took it down after questions were raised about its authenticity.

At a time when concerns have been raised about misinformation and falsehoods propagating online during the federal election, the Conservatives edited a leaked 2018 document that listed ideas Liberal MPs had heard about housing affordability during town hall events.

The original document, only one page of which is available online, stated an idea that had “emerged” from Liberal town halls on housing affordability was to increase capital gains taxes on home sales to discourage people from “flipping” houses. The idea was not endorsed in the document and its author, Toronto Liberal candidate Adam Vaughan, said the party did not consider it.

“It was presented as a summary of things heard at town halls expressed by members of the public,” Vaughan said on Twitter Monday. “It was never discussed as a policy. It’s not a position I support. It’s not Liberal policy.”

But the Conservatives said Monday that it’s evidence of a “hidden home tax” the Liberals would bring in should they be elected.

The altered image originally posted by the Conservatives removed the date, November 2018, during which Vaughan prepared the policy memo, and the fact that it was submitted by the party’s Ontario caucus.

When contacted by the Star about the altered image, the Conservatives removed it and replaced it with another version of the memo, first published by Conservative candidate Pierre Poilievre in September. The Star has requested the complete memo from the Liberal caucus — only the first page has been published — but has not yet received a copy.

In a statement, Conservative spokesperson Simon Jefferies doubled down on the assertion that a re-elected Liberal government would “tax your home.”

“For the sake of brevity, we removed a line that says “Campaign Platform 2019 — ON Caucus Submission” which despite the Trudeau Liberals’ scrambled denials confirms the fact that this was a policy proposal from Justin Trudeau’s housing czar,” Jefferies told the Star.

The Conservatives launched “hiddenhometax.ca” Monday, alleging the Liberals would implement a capital gains tax hike if re-elected — despite the Liberals’ repeated public denials of any such plans.

In response, the Liberals accused the Conservatives of “copying the American right-wing playbook.”

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