One thing you have to admire about the CFIB, they are consistent. No waffling there. In today’s TJ Leanne Hachey, Vice-President, Atlantic Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), demanding the province cut small business taxes. Unidimensional. Consistent.
When Lord cut small biz taxes, the CFIB praised him to the highest mountain. Four years later, after New Brunswick had the second worst small biz performance in North America – nary a word out of the CFIB.
When will the CFIB admit that the success of small businesses doesn’t rest with one or two point tax cuts. All of Lord’s small business tax cuts combined amounted to about the cost of a Starbucks coffee per day per small business.
If the CFIB was really interested in the economic health of small businesses, it would focus on the underlying reason why they do so poorly in New Brunswick – because of the chronic economic challenges.
The best thing that could happen to the small businesses in the Miramichi would be for the mill to restart or some other large industrial company to come in with 800 high paying jobs. Then, the SMEs would have better outcomes. The same story applies across the province.
Diddling around with small biz tax rates while hundreds of high paying jobs disappear is silly. The CFIB should be right out front demanding that the government work to ensure that we receive our share of national and international business investment which in turn will gird up the SMEs and ultimately create the opportunity for genuine tax cuts. Cuts not based on a short term political pressure but cuts as a dividend for the strong economic growth in the province.