By Cheryl Jahn

Tax Cuts will come back “to bite BC”

Nov 19, 2024 | 1:04 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Early on the campaign trail, BC Conservative Leader John Rustad announced a tax rebate to provide relief on housing costs. Shortly afterwards, now-Premier David Eby took time on the campaign trail to propose a thousand-dollar per family tax cut as immediate relief to the public. But an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says cuts like that would erode the public purse too greatly.

“You know, tax cuts, they might sound attractive but they won’t address the big underlying drivers of the cost of living pressures that households are facing right now,” says economist Alex Hemingway. “Whether that’s housing, childcare or transportation. You know, each of these are challenges that require that we invest together as a society to build that housing, open new childcare spaces, and build public transportation and infrastructure.”

But Prince George-Mackenzie Conservative MLA Kiel Giddens disagrees.

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“At the end of the day, I think this report is a reflection of something that we’re going to see in this new government’s current mandate on taxes. And this is a government that has increased or raised 33 different taxes during their time in office. So what’s the next shoe to drop from a tax increase from the B.C. NDP? That’s what I want to know.”

And speaking of spending, in August of this year, then-Health Minister Adrian Dix announced billions on a new surgical tower in Prince George. But that comes on the heels of new hospitals in Terrace, Fort St. John, Fort St. James, as examples.

“We’ve gone from $50 billion in debt when they took office to $120 billion in provincial debt totally today, that’s over $20,000 per British Columbian,” says Giddens. “That we actually owe right now. And with all that spending, they have an increased private sector job growth to keep pace. In fact, in the last two years since David Eby has been the Premier public sector, job growth has gone up nine times to one, nine times nine jobs for every public sector job that they’ve created for every one private sector.”

Hemingway says one of the ways to accommodate a lessen of the tax burden on the average British Columbian is to raise revenues, other than through taxation of those who can ill-afford it.

“We should actually be looking as a province at restoring provincial revenues to the levels that they were a couple of decades ago,” says Hemingway. “And the best way to go about that is to look at taxes and those on those at the very top, on the richest, on the wealthiest landowners, on large corporations and I think the issue is doing a middle-class tax cut at this time makes that revenue challenge even bigger. So but you could do both.”

He says what British Columbia may want to convene is a citizens’ assembly to look at how this province – and its taxpayers – want to pay for public services.