Tory budget disappoints on infrastructure
The Harper government’s budget, tabled on Tuesday, bypassed crucial infrastructure needs of cities like Vancouver in favour of putting cash quickly and directly into the hands of targeted groups of voters in an election year.
The government did not have much room to manoeuvre, balancing its budget with a relatively modest $1.4-billion surplus for contingencies.
Ottawa clearly had to make tough spending decisions, and for its own partisan reasons preferred allocating billions of dollars immediately for a family income-splitting plan aimed at helping couples with disparate incomes.
The feds also nearly doubled contribution limits to Tax-Free Savings Accounts for those fortunate people able to make contributions of up to $10,000 annually.
And it courted seniors, a group that often votes Conservative, reducing the amount of registered retirement income funds they will be required to withdraw starting at age 71.
Money to fund transportation infrastructure priorities, on the other hand, was deferred to 2017-18, with only $250 million to flow that year as the program launches, eventually reaching $1 billion in annual funding for cities by 201920. The funding is to be restricted to projects financed by public-private partnerships.
The infrastructure needs are pressing. Metro Vancouver is scrambling to finance its transportation requirements, even asking voters to sanction a new tax for transit. Toronto and Montreal have similar transportation imperatives.
Notwithstanding Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s warm welcome of the budget measure, Ottawa appears not to have recognized the urgency inherent in a recent request by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for additional funds to build and upgrade infrastructure.
The budget did include some special cash for B.C., for the University of B.C.’s TRIUMF particle physics lab, for an International Maritime Centre in Vancouver, and for research on salmon, fish habitat restoration and analysis of oil spill impacts on coastal waters. But there was no new money specifically directed to resources for cleaning up spills, a renewed preoccupation for many Vancouverites following a recent oil spill in the city’s harbour.
British Columbians will welcome tax relief for small business, with the sector’s corporate tax rate moving from 11 to nine per cent over four years, though there’s concern it could encourage businesses to remain small. In B.C., 98 per cent of businesses — nearly 400,000 corporate entities — are small.
Mining groups were pleased to see in the budget an extension of the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit to next March, a measure initially announced last month.
The budget will disappoint the Business Council of B.C. which — in vain — called on Ottawa to augment resources for tourism marketing in the U.S., an effort that could have yielded significant benefit for the province.
Similarly a business council wish that Ottawa up its commitment to engage and build capacity with B.C. aboriginal groups was not acted upon.
Overall, it was a cautious, stay-the-course budget designed primarily, one might argue, to get the Conservatives re-elected.