Trudeau touts benefits
PM visits New Brunswick to plug Canada Workers Benefit, budget
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped in rural New Brunswick Thursday to promote his government’s new Canadian Workers Benefit announced in the recent budget, but a former MP for the area says Ottawa needs to do more to help people actually get jobs.
Trudeau met briefly with New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant in Sussex before holding a roundtable discussion with a handful of business leaders from the community known for farming and a major potash mine that closed two years ago.
The prime minister said the new Canada Workers Benefit will help people who are struggling and may not make enough to benefit from the middle class tax cut.
“The new Canada Workers Benefit allows low-income workers to take home more money while they work, encouraging more people to join the workforce and to stay in the workforce. It means that starting next year someone earning $15,000 a year could receive up to $500 more from the Canada Workers Benefit than they received under the old working income tax benefit,” Trudeau said.
But former Conservative MP Rob Moore said the Liberal government isn’t doing enough to actually help people find work in the first place.
“This is a farming area and they treated farmers like tax cheats with their small business tax changes. This is an area that is dependent on transportation and agriculture, and their carbon tax is going to make us a less competitive and more costly region. I think there’s damage control going on,” he said.
Moore said the Trudeau government is discouraging economic development, arguing that the Energy East pipeline project would have proceeded under a Tory government.
But Trudeau responded to the pipeline issue Thursday, saying the decision to halt the project was made by the company.
“We know that the only way to move forward on creating good jobs, on creating a better future for our kids is by protecting the environment and growing the economy at the same time. That’s the only way to move forward responsibly,” he said.
“The Energy East pipeline was a market decision made by a company that was having trouble filling the Keystone XL pipeline that had just been approved. There was no business case anymore according to the company.”