Bill No. 335 - Income Tax Act (amended) - Second Reading

Speaker, I'm just going to say a few words, because I'm curious to see what the government has to say about this.

I think that there are obvious downsides to being a jurisdiction that is more highly taxed than others. The member has enumerated those well.

I also think it's important to look at what we're talking about here. From the perspective of our party that has put forward, over the past couple years in particular, a number of programs to deal with the inflationary pressures we're under, the benefit of indexing tax brackets would be concentrated at the high end of earners.

Households earning under $23,000 per year get no benefit. Households earning $23,000 to $33,000 per year would receive $19 over a five-year period. Middle- and high-income earners also would see a moderate increase. Those making $70,000 to $80,000 per year - maybe some of those nurses we were talking about - are looking at a savings of about $50 per year.

We do want to be in concert with other provinces. We don't have a problem with it per se, but of course our focus is on a progressive tax system so the people who can best bear it pay the taxes.

The reason we feel that way is because we understand - I've heard the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board speak to this - that revenue is important and that revenue helps the government do the work it needs to do.

The challenge in this circumstance is that the current government spends those revenues with almost no oversight. It makes it very difficult for us to understand if they are, in fact, doing the work that Nova Scotians need most.

We go through a budget process every Spring. I've heard ministers say: The Opposition likes to attack us for appropriations. Over a billion dollars in spending outside of the budgetary process is not democratic.

Bills that we have now before this Legislature are doing things that are reducing the democratic nature of the way we conduct our business. I know this bill doesn't directly deal with that, but I think it's important because, as a party, we do believe that tax revenue is important. We do believe in a social safety net.

We do believe in making sure government can provide for people. When we push for housing, we're also saying we understand government needs revenue to provide that and they should. When we talk about the need for better health care, we understand that revenue is required for that. We also believe that goes hand in hand with transparency. The transparency is what we don't see.

That is challenging. If we wanted to cut straight to the chase in terms of actually helping people with the revenues we have, we could do it by things like a universal school food program. We could do it by unfreezing income assistance rates.

We could do it by any number - the Affordable Living Tax Credit is something that has been shown to help people immensely. It's a credit. It's not a rebate. At the front end, it's hugely helpful to people who have a challenge in meeting their bills.

These are important issues. These are issues that were not dealt with during the eight years the Liberals were in power and certainly could have indexed tax rates but didn't. They're not being dealt with now.

As to whether that's something we need to do again, if we are talking in particular - the one compelling argument I heard was about attracting health care workers to this jurisdiction. We need workers. We have labour force issues. If we want to attract physicians and other people, we have to have a competitive environment in which to do that.

We understand. We also think that if we're really talking about the cost of living and we're really talking about helping working families, seniors, and other people who need that help, there are several bills on the Order Paper that we have put forward over the past couple years that might be a more direct path.