New Democrats rejected Stephen Harper’s 2008 Conservative budget as a continuation of an agenda that’s failing working families and the middle-class in Canada.
“A budget is where you set priorities,” said NDP Leader Jack Layton. “And this prime minister has again placed corporate tax giveaways ahead of investing in hard-working families.”
With uncertain economic times ahead, the Harper agenda has ensured corporations will be paying less than their fair share for government services, while hard-working Canadians will pick up the additional costs. Under the Harper agenda, revenues from personal income taxes will grow by 12%, while income from corporate profits will decline by 14% due to the massive corporate tax cuts.
“For every one dollar the 2008 Harper budget allocates in new spending, it spends six dollars in corporate tax giveaways,” said Layton. “Yet this budget fails to train a single doctor, make a single prescription drug more affordable or build a single unit of affordable housing.”
“At a time when our health care system is in crisis, this government has now officially abandoned its promise to reduce wait times by allocating no money to the initiative whatsoever,” said Layton.
The NDP noted that the Harper agenda gives profitable corporations multi-year commitments for tax cuts, while aboriginal communities, transit initiatives and research have to get by with temporary commitments and one-offs.
NDP Finance Critic Thomas Mulcair (Outremont) said the Harper budget continues an agenda that picks winners and losers. “The winners today are the banks, the big polluters and the well-off. Meanwhile, hard-working Canadians lose out,” said Mulcair.
“After years of unprecedented federal surpluses, this should have been an era of significant investment where the gap between the rich and the rest was closed,” said Mulcair. “The three Harper budgets, supported by the Bloc and now the Liberals, have turned out to be a tragic lost opportunity.”
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