The details of the provincial government’s Budget 2017 laid out some tax relief for businesses and rural communities that will also help families and individuals in the South Cariboo, says their representative in legislature.
Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Donna Barnett MLA Donna Barnett is also Minister of State for Rural Economic Development, and says there are all kinds of great things coming down the pike with Budget 2017.
“It’s a budget that’s made to help business, to help families and to keep people working.”
Provincial Sales Tax will no longer be applied to BC Hydro meaning big cost savings for mines, mills and pipelines giving communities more strength through further jobs and spending power for equipment and supplies for their local industries, she explains.
This saves some big money for not only the larger employers in the Cariboo-Chilcotin who obviously use plenty of electricity, such as mills and mines, but medium and small companies will also benefit, right down to the small family business.
The latter will see more savings in this budget with the small business corporate tax rate cut from 2.5 per cent to two per cent, she adds.
Barnett says overall, the tax cuts will also boost families and individuals in the South Cariboo, whether they own a business, their household’s primary wage earner works locally or even if they commute to jobs in other parts of the province.
“There will [also] be more funding for parks and environmental protection, which of course helps the Cariboo-Chilcotin.”
Barnett says other regional highlights are Ministry of Education’s three-year/$9 million special fund to mitigate school closures, which will benefit rural areas with too few students to meet the criteria to qualify for staying open.
“If they meet the criteria in that [they have] ‘so many students’ but the cost of keeping them open can’t be borne by the school district [with the current per-student ministry funding], then that fund is there to help.”
Although it’s too soon to say if the aging 100 Mile House Elementary School will be on the rebuild list, she’s continuing to aim for that as it remains a target of her own, she adds.
“I think it’s an excellent budget, even compared to the previous, because there were things we couldn’t afford to do – to put more money into long-term care, to put more money into helping families, social development and those types of things, education – and now it’s there and that’s very positive.”
