The President of the Quesnel and District Chamber of Commerce says there were a couple of wins but also some things missing in last week’s provincial budget.
Rick Wittner says they were pleased to see that the Employer Health Tax threshold was increased.
“They increased it from 500 thousand to a million dollars which is a welcome change. The BC Chamber and Business Associations had requested that it be raised to 1.5 million, but we’ll take that as a win, so this will help out a lot of our mid size businesses that won’t have to pay that Employer Health Tax.”
Wittner says the 7.9 billion dollar deficit is also a concern.
“The debt is expected to increase significantly, rising to 165 billion by the end of their fiscal plan. As a result of the increased capital investments, taxpayer supported debt to GDP ratio will rise to 27.5 percent. While investments in health and housing and education are important to business, there are concerns about the long term affordability of the budget.”
Wittner says they were also disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be anything in the budget to address downtown crime, which he says has frustrated members.
“Yes I think they will be very frustrated and that’s something that the Chamber is going to be doing, we’re reaching out to the MP and our MLA to try and see if we can put pressure on government to try and alleviate these issues.”
Wittner says they need more than just financial help to deal with the aftermath of the crime.
He says they’d like to see more penalties for people that are committing these crimes to try and get them to stop.
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