Priority #1: Job Creation

We in Windsor-Tecumseh understand better than most Canadians that much as we demand compassionate Government able and willing to help the most desperate, the best assistance Canadians can be rendered are secure, good-paying jobs which promise a vibrant economic future for families and communities. New Democrats have a substantive, balanced and aggressive plan to kick-start a real middle class recovery by creating a tax environment which richly rewards companies who invest right here in Windsor/Essex and across Canada while punishing those who exploit historically low tax rates while systematically eliminating positions and radically diminishing the quality of those few that remain.

At the core of our plan is a long-overdue cut to the onerous tax rates paid by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME), which constitute one of Canada’s primary drivers of middle-class employment and the engine of sustainable private-sector economic growth. By immediately dropping the marginal SME rate from 11% to 9%, we’ll help ensure that the family business, restaurant or the innovative startup shares in the historic tax reductions showered in recent years upon banks, oil companies and the financial services sector. Through strategic investments in innovation, research and regional development, we’ll continue to support the re-tooling, re-invention and sustained recovery of strategic industrial sectors like the automotive industry right here in Windsor.

In recognition of the need to reign in the unprecedented Conservative deficit created by Stephen Harper’s reckless fiscal management, we’ll maintain the general corporate taxation rate at 2008 levels, a highly dynamic rate which already ranks Canada the most competitive industrialized jurisdiction in the world. Canadian individuals and families are being asked to sacrifice substantially to help pay off Stephen Harper’s unrestrained deficit spending, his unpopular HST tax hike, and years of unjustifiable tax giveaways to Rogers, Royal Bank and millionaires atop the economic heap. It’s only fair that those with the most capacity to pay step up and help us get our nation’s fiscal house in order without decimating the core social services upon which the quality of life of Canadians depends.

As the only party whose plan for the Canadian economy is rooted in a vision of shared prosperity through good times, and shared sacrifice through tough times, we’ll continue to aggressively advocate a plan which elevates the creation of sustainable, lucrative middle class jobs right here in Windsor-Tecumseh as Canada’s first, over-arching economic priority.