A United Conservative government would get Albertans back to work by delivering a job creation tax cut which economists estimate would create at least 55,000 jobs, and grow Alberta’s economy by $13 billion.
United Conservative Leader Jason Kenney called the announcement “the centre piece of our job creation strategy designed to get Alberta back to work.”
The corporate tax cut would reduce the general business rate from 12 per cent, to 11 per cent in July 2019, and would then reduce it by a further percentage point each year until fiscal year 2022-23, when it would be by far the lowest rate in Canada, at eight per cent.
“Last week’s economic news suggests that we may now be in the NDP’s second recession in four years,” Kenney said. “170,000 Albertans are out of work, tens of thousands have given up looking for work, the average family’s take home pay is down by $6,400 since the NDP came to office, and unemployment has been on the rise for six of the past eight months. We cannot continue like this. We need real change that gets Alberta back to work.”
Kenney made the announcement from an empty floor of a Calgary office tower, which he called a symbol of four years of failed NDP economic policy.
“Over a quarter of downtown Calgary looks like this – empty floors that used to occupy tens of thousands of people working in high paying jobs. Empty space like this is growing in Edmonton, and in communities around our province. These vacant offices aren’t going to fill themselves,” Kenney said. “The thousands of businesses that have gone under aren’t going to be replaced by a few government subsidies. The flight of jobs and money from Alberta to the U.S. won’t stop by accident. It will require bold, decisive action to restore investor confidence, to diversify our economy, and to undo the damage of the NDP’s job-killing policies.”
“So today I’m announcing that if elected, a UCP government will implement the job creation tax cut to reduce the provincial tax rate on employers by one third, from 12 per cent to eight per cent over four years. This will make Alberta once again a magnet for job-creating investment, with the lowest taxes on employers in Canada.”
The Job Creation Tax Cut will benefit Alberta business, including the ninety-seven percent of Alberta businesses that are small or medium sized businesses with fewer than 500 employees.
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