It’s a balanced pre-election road map for the Stephen Harper Conservatives. But it remains to be seen whether Minister of Finance Joe Oliver’s Economic Action Plan 2015 will do enough to keep the country on track financially.
Oliver deserves applause for delivering on the government’s promise to table a balanced budget that includes a projected $1.4 billion surplus for fiscal 2015-16 in the midst of depressed oil prices and slumping global demand for resources.
Extension of the mineral exploration tax credit through to March 2016 was therefore welcome news for B.C.’s ailing mining sector.
Small-business groups in this province and elsewhere in the country were likewise cheered by the government’s continued reduction in Canada’s small-business corporate tax rate, which will drop to 9% from 11% by 2019. Rewarding fiscally prudent savers in the country with a higher allowable tax-free savings account contribution limit and recognizing the changing investment and demographic realities facing seniors by lowering mandatory withdrawals from registered retirement income funds will also have benefits in the wider economy.
But the budget has provided little in the way of major economic policy direction to stimulate growth and competitiveness in the global marketplace during a period in which the country’s main commodity exports face falling prices and stiffer competition.
Promised new infrastructure funding of $750 million over two years starting in 2017-18 is welcome news for transit-challenged urban centres like Metro Vancouver, but allocation of the federal funds has yet to be detailed.
B.C. also needs far more than additional dollars for Lower Mainland transit.
It needs major infrastructure investment in the province’s north, especially airports and air services, which are the transportation keys to developing the energy fields and pipelines that will give Western Canada’s liquefied natural gas and other natural resources access to the international marketplace.
