Image Credit: Flickr / Government of BC

By Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Donna Barnett

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SOUND OFF: B.C. is now a ‘have not’ province

Sep 11, 2020 | 3:20 PM

AT A TIME WHEN PREMIER JOHN HORGAN is strongly hinting at a snap election call this fall, the Ministry of Finance put out a late-day news release last week confirming small business will no longer receive any additional assistance from government during the pandemic.

Effective September 30th, there will be no further extension for businesses to remit payment of provincial sales tax, carbon tax, motor fuel tax, tobacco tax and hotel tax due to COVID-19.

This comes as a devastating blow to many small businesses – especially in the tourism industry – that are still struggling to get off their feet in the wake of the pandemic.

Rather than release a comprehensive economic recovery plan, Horgan is now telling the business community that they will have to pay up months of back taxes or face severe penalties.

Right now British Columbia is suffering the third highest unemployment rate in Canada. Before the last election, we used to be the economic leader in the country due to low taxes and the elimination of a budget deficit.

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But now in the lower mainland alone, about 8,000 Greater Vancouver businesses and 149,000 jobs were lost between February and April due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this according to Statistics Canada numbers cited by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade.

As soon as temporary government support programs wind down – such as the September 30th tax deadline for small business owing back taxes – we can expect more unemployment and permanent business shutdowns unless the NDP finally comes up with an economic recovery plan.

In the complete absence of a recovery plan, the NDP is placing the province into greater debt – $12.4 billion in the current fiscal year – and yet small business is expected to pick up all the slack on their own.

According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, forty per cent of small and medium-sized businesses in B.C. say they haven’t paid their provincial tax bills yet, and one in ten say they won’t be able to pay by the September 30 deadline.

This is no way to run a province and an economy that relies almost exclusively on the small and medium sized business sector to provide jobs and a once-solid tax base.

In the absence of any economic recovery program by the NDP, the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade is recommending the following:

• lowering the PST temporarily
• implementing a payroll tax holiday
• providing a working-capital grant and employee retraining program for small business
• deferring Workers’ Compensation premium payments
• encouraging travel in B.C. and Canada by waiving the PST on flights and hotels
• reviewing existing regulations, deferring new ones and cutting red tape where possible
• continuing funding and expand child-care services

Unless John Horgan and the NDP wake up and realize that the future of our province is at stake, we will continue to lose more jobs and the cornerstone of our economy, the small business community in British Columbia.

As the Official Opposition, our focus is on jobs and the economy. Premier Horgan and his NDP government should do the same, instead of just worrying about a fall election.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.