Nothing much to encourage economy

“Enhancements to the WITB will help people exit homelessness more quickly and have a positive impact on preventing homelessness,” he said.

There wasn’t much in Tuesday’s budget to encourage Alberta’s recovering economy, Nenshi said. “At a time when the rest of the country is doing pretty well, you really have to focus your economic development efforts, your innovation efforts, your foreign direct-investment efforts on Alberta,” Nenshi said. “And really work hard on at-

We’re rapidly becoming unattractive for people to do business here and that concerns me.

tracting new kinds of investment, and we really haven’t seen that from this federal government yet.”

Calgary MP Michelle Rempel took aim at Ottawa’s decision to limit who qualifies for the small business tax rate; the federal government plans to gradually eliminate the amount eligible for the preferential small business rate as the amount of passive income rises above $50,000 — with the small business deduction limit reduced to zero once income rises to $150,000.

“With the changes to the small business taxes (and) the fact that the Americans have significantly lowered their tax burden, we’re rapidly becoming unattractive for people to do business here and that concerns me (for) Alberta’s longterm ability to diversify.”