Carole James released a new plan today that breaks their commitment to balance the budget in three years, introduces new taxes, and pursues job-killing strategies in our industries and small businesses.
This is not a platform -- it is a plank off which they are asking British Columbians to walk. It’s dishonest, it’s not credible, and it will result in long-term deficits and debt on our children. It will kill more jobs at a time when we need jobs the most.
Here are some examples:
Their plan is dishonest – it’s a recipe for endless deficits, and breaks their promise for a balanced budget
- They have broken their promise to have a balanced the budget within three years. The NDP all stood up in the House and voted for that legislation just two months ago
- Their plan puts $3.5 billion in new spending on taxpayers over the next three years with no strategy to get out of the hole. It is a recipe for unending deficits under the NDP
- They have already broken key promises – for example, they are only providing a short term “tax holiday” to small business, instead of cutting long-term taxes for these job-creators; meanwhile they are laying $450 million in costs on them through minimum wage policies
- They are counting on new taxes, revenues and “reallocations” that just don’t exist. They are demanding $1 billion in taxes from industry that will be undermined with their policies. They are looking to strip a further $1.2 billion from government spending on top of the $1.9 billion government has already committed to cut
- They lied about eliminating the carbon tax. In fact, in 2011 they are introducing a new carbon tax called the “GHG emissions pricing” tax that will attack rural industry like mills, mines and farms that employ thousands of workers
Their plan is just not credible – their research is bad, their assumptions are wrong, and the plan doesn’t add up.
- There is no plan to get BC back to surplus – it is a “spend, spend, spend” agenda without any restraint
- Their facts are just wrong. For example, they say the carbon tax is worth $1.8 billion over three years – it’s actually a $2.3 billion hit. That is a $500-million error in their plan on one page alone!
- They claim they can balance the budget by taxing industry to increase government revenues – but they are attacking the same industries that provide those revenues with $1 billion in new taxes
- For example, they are putting over $400 million in new taxes on oil and gas even though those industries provides over $2 billion a year in revenue to government because of competitive taxes. This will drive industry out of BC and ultimately turn off those revenues to government
- They claim they will fund much of their plan through their “Green Bond” program that asks citizens for their money for government to invest on their behalf. The NDP’s last B.C. bond program failed; it cost taxpayers $143 million because it did not work, and Carole James wants to do it again.
This plan is a job killer – they advocate policies that hurt industry and small business, and then expect those businesses to pay for the NDP’s plan.
- There is no plan to create sustainable jobs – only to attack the private sector to fund their spending spree
- For example, they are levelling $1 billion in new taxes on our rural industries – oil and gas, mining, clean energy and agriculture – at a time when they need help the most. This includes $400 million in taxes levelled directly on the oil and gas sector, $75 million on the clean energy sector and $185 million in new corporate capital taxes – a tax that was eliminated because it was a job-killer in the 1990s
- Their new $250-million “GHG emissions” tax is a new carbon tax that is a direct attack on rural BC – it will tax lumber mills, pulp mills, mines and agriculture. It will kill jobs
- They have violated their promise to cut small business taxes – opting for a one-time “tax holiday” of less than 0.5% compared to government’s commitment to cut small business taxes to the lowest in Canada by 2012. And they are levying $155 million in new costs on liquor retailers across B.C.
- They include veiled measures that will further hurt businesses, including changes to employment standards reducing flexibility and raising costs, and will seek increases to WorksafeBC premiums and payouts
- Meanwhile, they are still maintain job-killing policies including:
- Raising the minimum wage which will cost small business $450 million a year and eliminate tens of thousands of jobs
- A moratorium on IPPs that will kill thousands of future jobs and billion in new investment
- Scrapping the Softwood Lumber Agreement, jeopardizing thousands of jobs
- Opposing job creating infrastructure projects – whether it’s the Port Mann bridge, the South Fraser Perimeter Road, BC Place, or private sector projects like the Kitimat port and pipeline
