Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first federal budget has been both praised and panned since its debut on Tuesday.
The first federal Liberal budget in a decade features a $29.4-billion deficit, nearly triple what was promised on the campaign trail and a host of programs and services aimed at benefiting the middle class.
“I’ve kind of got mixed thoughts,” said Mayor Nolan Crouse.
On one hand, Crouse has tended towards being debt averse in his career and his time as an elected official. But he’s pleased to see funding for infrastructure, especially relative to transit, and housing in the budget.
“The importance of families was highlighted,” he said, and Crouse is happy to see some changes meant to help post-secondary students.
“On the human side, employment insurance, housing, students, families, are all very positive from my point of view. From a true fiscal point of view, we’ve postponed a tax increase,” Crouse said, though he noted that his views on the deficit are ideological and not all St. Albertans would agree with him.
“From the corporation, we look forward to housing and transit money, and community-wise we look forward to making sure that students, family and employment benefits are taken care of,” the mayor said.
St. Albert MP Michael Cooper, a Conservative, wasn’t happy with the budget or the proposed deficit and said there doesn’t seem to be a plan to get back in the black.
“It’s a bad deal, it raises taxes on families, students, small businesses, in terms of infrastructure funding it quite frankly fell short,” he said.
The changes to child and family benefits, with the Universal Child Care Benefit, income splitting, and fitness and arts credits are all being scrapped. While the Liberals say that nine out of 10 families will benefit from the new, non-taxable Canada child benefit that’s linked to household income levels, Cooper said “there at least 10 per cent of families who are going to get absolutely nothing.”
He did say there are some positive things about the budget.
“For example, the additional investment in public transit is a positive,” he said. But when it comes to infrastructure money for municipalities, he said it’s unclear how much Alberta will get and how much will trickle down to cities and towns.
He’s also not impressed with the elimination of education and text book tax credits, though the tuition tax credit remains.
“For many students, their taxes will go up by the elimination of those credits,” Cooper said.
Official Opposition Leader and Sturgeon River-Parkland MP Rona Ambrose, like her caucus colleague Cooper, is unimpressed, calling the budget “a betrayal of the middle class.”
She highlighted the elimination of tax credits for children and post secondary students and targeted the deficit.
“They’re borrowing way more money than they promised to borrow,” she said.
One good thing Ambrose saw in the budget was that the Liberals “backed off on their promise to tax stock options for start up companies,” something she said the Conservatives pressured the government on.
“In terms of the middle class, this budget is a big disappointment because every Canadian family’s bills just went up by about $3,000,” a number she said was the result of her party’s fiscal analysis of the budget.
“Of course there’s nothing in the budget for the oil and gas sector, I don’t have to tell you that. Not a mention of pipelines, not a mention of the oil and gas sector, but a lot of subsidies for renewable fuels. Nothing in the budget for farmers,” Ambrose said.
She also said much of the money for infrastructure won’t go to roads or highways, but to “social infrastructure.”
St. Albert MLA Marie Renaud said she was pleased to see money in the budget for affordable housing, including for seniors.
Tash Taylor, the executive director of St. Albert Housing, said the money in the federal budget for affordable housing is a step in the right direction, but said $2.3 billion over two years for the entire country “is really a modest amount.
“Not to complain, because it’s something, but how it’s going to actually trickle down to the smaller communities is yet to be seen,” Taylor said.
She did think there was some potential in new initiatives meant to provide low cost loans to municipalities and housing developers for affordable housing.
“So I think if our city and our council here have the gumption to tap into that, that could really be a positive move for a lot of people here,” Taylor said.
