Chris Wattie / Reuters Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes hands with Finance Minister Bill Morneau after Morneau delivered the budget in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
Advertisement
The Liberal government is also committing to increasing its overseas humanitarian aid budget by $2 billion over five years, which the budget says will be focused on supporting women and girls through its feminist global development policy.
While Clean Energy Canada applauds the budget’s various measures on carbon pricing and clean energy investments, it notes that there is no funding in this year’s budget for a promised zero emissions vehicle strategy.
We would have also liked to have seen better protections for in-family business transfers and better recognition of the non-paid contribution of shareholders in the budget. But it also states that the government will consider a peer-review approach to determining how to allocate such funding in the future – another recommendation from Naylor’s report. Sweeping tax reform in the US has wiped out Canada’s almost two-decade business tax advantage over the USA and also made the USA personal tax system even more competitive for skilled workers. After a year-long study of the payment sector the budget offers more consultation instead of action.
The budget itself is so complex it’s hard to say whether the government matched the Naylor suggestions word-for-word, said Martha Crago, a member of the panel and vice-president of research and innovation at McGill University. The Liberals have the support of more than half of those voters who self-identify as “left of centre”, compared to one-quarter who routinely say they support the NDP.
Former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins will head up an advisory council to come up with options on how to create a national pharmacare program – a program that the parliamentary budget watchdog has warned could cost $19 billion a year. This is in contrast to the Can$1 billion in new science funding contained in last year’s budget – nearly none of which went to basic research. Jim Woodgett, director of research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto, commented on Twitter: “It’s a good news budget for [Canadian] science but let’s not pitch it as winning”.
The budget backs off somewhat on the new tax measures with some changes. The budget modifications are recognized as a positive step for the industry. But, “there’s still room to go”.
That said, I must give credit where credit is due.
The budget plan includes only a brief reference, saying the government will conduct a detailed analysis “over the coming months” to assess the USA changes.
The prospective access to information watchdog said this week she will tackle a culture in government institutions that denies access to information, but nominee Caroline Maynard resisted calls to criticize a bill her predecessor and… “I think the community came together in a really wonderful way”.
Trudeau and Morneau are, it seems, making the right friends and enemies with their 2018 budget.
In addition, the budget proposes to create a new tri-council fund “to support research that is worldwide, interdisciplinary, fast-breaking and higher-risk”.
– $448.5 million over five years to double the number of placements under the Canada Summer Jobs program by 2019-20.
The Liberals will be able to enter an election year boasting the economy is strong and growing while the public finances are under control.
Advertisement
The issue has been particularly heated in Quebec, where there has been vocal criticism of the Liberals’ 2017 agreement with Netflix, which allows the US web-streaming giant to forgo paying sales tax by investing $500 million in Canadian productions over the next five years. SSHRC will administer this new fund, pegged at $275 million over five years, and then $65 million a year thereafter. The federal government proposes to treat those earnings as personal income and tax it the higher personal income tax rate.
