2010 BUDGET CHOICES: Layton Calls on Harper to Shelve Corporate Tax Cuts

SAULT STE. MARIE -- Next week’s federal budget will make important choices.
 
The Conservatives are promising more of the failed old policies of the past with a “stay the course” budget containing billions in corporate tax giveaways and cuts to services Canadians count on.
 
Jack Layton and the New Democrats have new ideas to ensure all Canadians benefit from the economic recovery that include shelving this year’s scheduled $12 billion corporate tax reductions.
 
“As a result of 10 years of cutting corporate taxes, individuals are carrying 61 per cent of the cost of government programs, while corporations now pay only 15 per cent,” Sault MP Tony Martin said. “This is not only unfair to taxpayers but hurts all Canadians denied services the government will cut.”

“For example, now is the time to invest instead in a better quality of life for our poorest seniors through improvements to the Guaranteed Income Supplement.”

Why do we need to postpone the corporate tax cuts? Quite simply, Canada can’t afford them right now. There is a record annual deficit of $56 billion and between 2008 and 2013 the business tax cuts are reducing the government’s tax take by a cumulative $60 billion. Without the corporate tax reductions brought in by Flaherty since 2006, the $160 billion cumulative budget deficit being run up by 2014 would be reduced by more than one-third - to about $100 billion.

With 1.5 million Canadians still unemployed, growing inequality and with seniors’ poverty doubling since the last round of service cuts, now is not the time to spend another $12 billion on corporate tax reductions.

Next week’s budget is about two choices: immediate investments to lift seniors out of poverty or tax cuts to the companies who need it least right now -- like big oil or the banks whose executives awarded themselves $8 billion in bonuses last year.

Jack Layton’s choice is to make reducing seniors’ poverty a priority in this budget.