By: Warren Frey
The speech stated the first four bills from the new government will repeal the carbon tax, introduce labour reforms and promote job creation to make Alberta “open for business”, cut taxes from employers from 12 per cent to 8 per cent and reduce regulations by one third.
Calgary Construction Association president Bill Black said it was “early days” but that the speech indicates a positive direction.
“The ‘open for business’ mentality is all good positive rhetoric and the kind of thing we sometimes need to hear considering everything we’ve been through,” Black said.
“I think the open for business bill will have a large potential impact. In particular in the speech from the throne the government signaled this is just the beginning, and that further consultation will occur in fall 2019,” Alberta Construction Association executive director Ken Gibson said.
Gibson also voiced support for tax reduction measures and said repeal of the carbon tax introduced by the previous NDP government would address the “unintended consequences” of the tax that affected the construction industry.
“The flow of that tax has affected input costs for contractors and every time there was an increase it wasn’t obvious they could recoup the costs. It’s not easy to separate the tax from an input cost increase,” he said.
“The carbon tax was a straight cost-adding measure, so if we were paying the carbon tax we were adding expense which affects our competitiveness worldwide. We want to compete and not be unnecessarily hampered,” Edmonton Construction Association executive director John McNicoll said.
Read more >> https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/associations/2019/05/alberta-construction-leaders-optimistic-throne-speech
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