How the federal parties say they will create jobs
The Tories offer a tax credit, NDP turns to small business, Grits go after high incomes
With Canada’s teetering on the brink of recession, federal parties are looking for ways to create jobs, ranging from infrastructure spending to tax relief. Conservatives: On the first full day of the 11-week campaign, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said his government would spend $60 million a year on increased and extended tax credits for businesses that hire would-be tradespeople.
The Apprenticeship Job Creation Tax Credit, around since 2006, would jump to $2,500 from $2,000 and would be applied to the third and fourth years of training. Harper said the tax credit would help to deal with Canada’s long-standing skilled labour shortage.
Before the election was called, the government announced $150 million in infrastructure spending on some 1,600 projects across the country — with a disproportionate share going to Conservative ridings.
New Democrats: NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair says he plans to strengthen the middle class by creating job opportunities across the country.
He says he will do that by lowering the tax rate for small businesses to 9 from 11 percent at a cost of $1billion a year to the federal coffers, and then kick-start the next generation of “good-paying” manufacturing jobs by investing in innovation and clean technologies.
The NDP insists Canada has lost more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs since the Conservatives came to power in 2006.
The party would create an innovation tax credit to encourage manufacturers to invest in machinery, equipment and property used in research and development. It has also promised to extend for an additional two years the accelerated capital cost allowance for machinery or equipment used in manufacturing, a tax break set to expire this year.
Liberals: Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says he will create jobs by cutting income taxes for the middle-class and raising taxes for the wealthiest 1 per cent. Under the proposal the Liberals would reduce the 22-per-cent tax rate for middle-income earners to 20.5 per cent.
The cut would apply to those with taxable incomes between $44,701 and $89,401, and would amount to $3 billion per year.
And to pay for that, the Grits would create a new tax bracket of 33 per cent for those earning more than $200,000 a year.
The party’s job creation plan also calls for Canada to become the world’s most competitive tax jurisdiction for investments in research, development and manufacturing of clean technology while increasing the federal government’s use of clean technologies in order to create domestic demand for clean technology firms that in turn would create jobs.