As the BC Conservative Party attempts to position itself as a contender in next year's provincial election, Business in Vancouver sat down with party leader John Cummins to discuss his strategies for growing business in the province.
Q&A
Q: If elected premier, would you make any changes to corporate tax rates?
A: The [Liberal] government committed in the last budget that corporate taxes would be going up a percentage in the next year, and we think that that's just the wrong thing to be doing at this time. If anything, if you want to grow business, if you want to increase investment, you should be lowering taxes.
Q: What's your position on B.C.'s minimum wage hike? Would you reverse it?
A: We just were dumbfounded when the premier decided to go ahead with the increase in minimum wage. [But] it's pretty tough to reverse courses on these kinds of things.
Q: What's your position on Family Day? Would you scrap it?
A: [Family Day will be] very, very hard for small businesses. Again, it's tough to scrap something that you already have. That's the challenge that I think is going to face us.
Q: The most recent provincial budget cancelled a plan to reduce the small business corporate income tax rate to 0% from 2.5%. Would you re-institute that reduction?
A: I think that's something we'd have to give serious consideration [to].
Q: Would you look at re-introducing the HST?
A: I think the Liberals have poisoned the well when it comes to HST, probably for a generation. It'd be very, very difficult to bring that tax back to B.C. Many business people found it to be the best alternative and yet even if you lowered the PST portion of [the HST] now [and re-introduced it], the public resistance would be just huge.
Q: Do you see any opportunities to retool the PST to create any of the economic benefits anticipated under the HST?
A: The big issue is a single tax and a single tax collector – that was a huge savings for the provincial government [with the HST]. And you can rejig and play around with the PST as much as you want, but it just complicates matters too. We'll look at alternatives but it's tough – the government has really poisoned the well on consumption taxes in this province for a long time to come.
Q: How would you reduce red tape for B.C. businesses?
A: When it comes to the environmental assessment process that's necessary for the mining industry and other resource-extraction or utilization projects in the province, we've got to make that process more effective; there has to be some time limits on it. The lines and the expectations have to be very, very clear to the businesses that are going to be making these kinds of investments, and that's something that really hasn't happened.
Q: A lot of your policies are pro-business. What's your appeal for the broader voter base, including New Democratic Party supporters?
A: It's the openness of the party. Party members will work together to develop the party's policies. We're also ensuring that our MLAs put the interests of their constituents ahead of the party, because that's really one of the biggest problems that you have both provincially and federally – that people elect a representative and then that representative takes off to Ottawa or Victoria and … all they're doing is bringing the party's message back to the constituency. People don't want that. •
