BC Budget good for the North?

* $1.5 billion – disaster recovery

* $2 billion – housing hub

* $710 million – health care

* $500 million – mental health supports

* $506 million – green recovery

Where there wasn’t much spending was on small businesses, which has been devastated by the pandemic. Not surprising to the local Chamber of Commerce, which lays out some ways the budget could have helped.

“The threshold for the [Employer Health Tax] could have been adjusted. That would have helped not just small businesses but the reciprocal ends of that as well. So, the municipality pays the EHT, so there could have been some savings derived from that,” says Todd Corrigall, CEO for the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. “What they could have looked at also was deferrals of costs from small business.”

And then there were programs to help small businesses that went largely unsubscribed because of the unwieldy nature of the application process. That money could have been distributed to businesses.

As for the big-spending, where that money shakes out is still the question.

“There aren’t a lot of NDP ridings beyond Hope. So what are our chances here in Prince George of getting our fair share of those dollars? Probably not as good as those people who live in Vancouver or Vancouver. We’ll just have to wait and see how much is it going to help out Northern communities.”

However, the government expects to see revenues from forestry to decline by nearly a billion dollars over the next two years.

by Cheryl Jahn

BC Budget good for the North?

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