I don’t know what the ROI modeling looks like, so I can’t speak to whether $100M grants (let alone the various loans / guarantees) represent good value for money. But it is concerning how challenging our business climate is in this country that big projects won’t happen here without government covering a third of start-up costs.
The Liberals went on a crusade in the budget calling on “the ultra wealthy” to pay more. How do you make a big deal increasing the taxation of doctors and folks selling their family cottage yet hand out $100M as a grant (not a loan, not in equity) to people who are actually ultra rich? I’m not saying this is bad policy per se, but it certainly reflects the hypocrisy (if not schizophrenia) in the current government’s actions.
But more importantly, maybe instead of trying to squeeze more from what increasingly appears to be a stone, we should be asking “have we made the Canadian economy uncompetitive in this increasingly globalized world and now find ourselves constantly trying to spend our way out of this problem, only to also have to increase taxes to pay for that spending, in turn making the business environment even less competitive”? It feels like we are spiraling in the wring direction.
Maybe next year we should increase the capital gains inclusion rate to 100% and then have to pay $200M to attract this same project that would otherwise go to the growing list of more business-friendly jurisdictions.
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I don’t know what the ROI modeling looks like, so I can’t speak to whether $100M grants (let alone the various loans / guarantees) represent good value for money. But it is concerning how challenging our business climate is in this country that big projects won’t happen here without government covering a third of start-up costs.
The Liberals went on a crusade in the budget calling on “the ultra wealthy” to pay more. How do you make a big deal increasing the taxation of doctors and folks selling their family cottage yet hand out $100M as a grant (not a loan, not in equity) to people who are actually ultra rich? I’m not saying this is bad policy per se, but it certainly reflects the hypocrisy (if not schizophrenia) in the current government’s actions.
But more importantly, maybe instead of trying to squeeze more from what increasingly appears to be a stone, we should be asking “have we made the Canadian economy uncompetitive in this increasingly globalized world and now find ourselves constantly trying to spend our way out of this problem, only to also have to increase taxes to pay for that spending, in turn making the business environment even less competitive”? It feels like we are spiraling in the wring direction.
Maybe next year we should increase the capital gains inclusion rate to 100% and then have to pay $200M to attract this same project that would otherwise go to the growing list of more business-friendly jurisdictions.