Among Premier Jason Kenney’s flagship policy promises was to create jobs by cutting corporate taxes.
However, since the rate was reduced down to 11 per cent from 12 effective July 1, with the end goal of decreasing it to a rock bottom low of eight per cent by 2022, no jobs have actually materialized.
Instead, companies have — as all critics and observers of history predicted — largely bought back their own stock and paid off debt. Put simply, the wealthy got wealthier at everyone else’s expense.
Only a handful have reportedly planned for increased spending that would create additional employment. Meanwhile, according to a labour report from Statistics Canada, Alberta’s economy bled about 14,000 full-time jobs in July.
Even the UCP’s energy minister Sonya Savage reportedly said in an interview with the Calgary Herald that the government is “a little disappointed in seeing what decisions have been made on where that investment, where that money, goes.”
But it’s still early on, she argued, pleading for patience and declaring she isn’t remotely concerned.
However, we do not anticipate — short of new pipelines coming to fruition as well as a sudden, and at this point frankly unexpected, resurgence to soaring prices of $100-plus per barrel — the situation to improve significantly.
And now, the province will have to figure out how to balance the spreadsheets with a gaping $4.5-billion hole in the budget.
Irfan Sabir, official Opposition critic for Energy and MLA for Calgary-McCall, claimed in a press release that the minister does not care about jobs. But we think that’s taking her words out of context. Savage never said she doesn’t care about jobs, just that she’s not concerned none have yet been created because she’s confident that it’s just a matter of time.
The extent of a policy’s success should be measurable, though.
So Sabir certainly was not wrong when he added that the minister “must set a jobs target and a deadline. A policy without a goal and a deadline is just an expensive fantasy.”
Not that already immensely profitable multi-billion-dollar corporations that haven’t posted any losses — despite the downturn — mind, of course.
While we do hope the tax cuts eventually spur job creation, we wonder whether the NDP will still be blamed if none materialize.
— Ducatel is the Round Up’s editor
