The Liberals tabled their Federal Budget for this year on Wednesday, March 22.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau projected the deficit for the 2016-17 fiscal year to be $23-billion, while next year, it’ll grow to $28.5-billion.
During the announcement, $395-million was announced over three years for the Youth Employment Strategy. It also plans to provide $11.2-billion over 10 years to the cities and provinces to pay for affordable housing.
Arnold Viersen (File Photo)
But the Opposition Conservatives didn’t feel the budget was all good news for Canadians.
In fact, when it comes to the rural population, Peace River-Westlock MP Arnold Viersen called it a disaster.
Viersen told the AM 610 Newsroom that the recently-introduced Federal Carbon Tax isn’t fair for rural communities.
“That single policy is affecting rural Canadians disproportionately compared to all other Canadians,” said Viersen. “We typically drive further to get around. It typically costs more to heat our homes, and the power distribution is much larger than it is in the city.”
When it comes to taxes, Viersen says the government is only scooping out the money from the rural areas, which is where all of Canada’s resource production is located.
“It doesn’t spend the money on rural infrastructure in order to continue all that resource development,” he said. “But instead, it’s focused on making smart cities, centres of excellence, and information superclusters. None of which we will find out in rural Canada.”
Overall, Viersen says the Liberals have no plan to tackle the ballooning deficit.
“I like to call it “The Waterslide with No Water,”” said Viersen. “It sounds like a waterslide, but it’s going to hurt on the way down. With this deficit, we haven’t seen the incredible economic growth that the Liberals were promising. Our economy continues to grow at about 1.5 percent, which was projected before the steep deficit spending. So, it’s not actually giving us any value for our money.”
The Liberals also announced that they’re raising the tax on fuel and natural gas, while eliminating tax credits on things like tuition and public transit, among others.
– Posted by BET
