The Liberal budget sets Canada up for long-term structural deficits, does “very little in the way of creating jobs” and results in tax increases for every Canadian, Conservative MP Michael Cooper told business owners at a meeting Wednesday.
“Barely after the votes were counted and the new government was sworn in,” the Liberals tabled a budget March 22 that posted a deficit three times greater than originally promised, the St. Albert MP told business owners at a St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce lunch meeting.
Although he said it was important to give the new government time to settle in and recognized it has done some things right, Cooper said that when it comes to managing the country’s finances, creating jobs and protecting Canadians against terrorism, the Liberals have left the country wanting.
When campaigning last fall Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented Canadian voters with a plan to run three moderate $10 billion deficits and return to a balanced budget by the 2019-20 fiscal year.
More disappointingly though, said Cooper, is the fact that the Liberals have reneged on the very reason for running a deficit in the first place: to create jobs by investing in infrastructure.
“This budget does not provide any new funds for roads; no new funds for bridges; no new funds for highways; no new funds for rails; no new funds for transportation systems,” said Copper.
With $60 billion of the announced spending already accounted for in the previous Conservative budget, the additional $11.9 billion over five years is being put toward “ill-defined” green and social infrastructure projects.
Cooper argued that rather than increases to temporary cyclical spending to get Canada out of its current economic slump, the budget offers programs a “massive” 7.6-per-cent increase in permanent ongoing discretionary spending, which is likely to set the country up for long-term structural deficits.
Cooper told the crowd that the only area the Liberals “saw fit to cut back on” was Canada’s national defence spending. The budget deferred $3.7 billion for the acquisition of military equipment at a time when “we face a very serious threat from terrorism,” said Cooper, pointing to the recent ISIS attacks in Paris and Brussels.
Cooper did commend the government’s efforts to fund public transit and told the chamber he would fight to get St. Albert’s fair share in an effort to build the LRT to the Edmonton.
The budget is also bad for small business, he said. Not only did the Liberals break a campaign promise to lower the small business tax rate from 11 per cent to nine per cent – a move brought forward by the Conservatives in their spring 2015 budget, pointed Cooper – the governing party has “penalized” small business owners with payroll taxes and the elimination of the hiring tax credit.
“Small businesses constitute the economic backbone of Canada,” said Cooper, “and yet, rather than encouraging small businesses and creating the conditions for long-term growth and prosperity (the Liberal government) has decided to penalize small business owners with tax increases.”
Small businesses make up 98 per cent of companies in Canada, constitute more than 70 per cent of private sector employment and contribute 40 per cent of Canada’s GDP.
“In the very short six months that the Liberals have been in office there is much, in my respectful view, wanting,” concluded Cooper, who was hoping to see more in terms of job creation, especially in Alberta.
