Posted By Jeff Helsdon

One budget, three MPs and three different viewpoints.
 
Although all MPs in the area surrounding Tillsonburg are Conservative, each saw different things in the budget for their ridings. The $229.1 billion budget will include money for home renovations, municipal infrastructure, job training, extending employment insurance and agriculture. It will also create a deficit of $29.5 billion in 2009 and $85 billion over five years.

Oxford MP Dave MacKenzie sees a tax credit for up to $1,350 for home renovations as a boost in many ways. Most obviously, he said it would help building supply retailers.

“I’ve talked to a number of those people in the last while and they are pretty slow,” he said.

In addition, manufacturers in the home supply business will also become busier.
 
“It will put people to work and when those people are working they will buy cars and it will help the auto industry,” he said.

Opportunities to expand broadband are also something MacKenzie noted as a positive. He knows it’s an issue in Tillsonburg and is important to business.

Other positives he mentioned were $500 million in an agriculture flexibility fund to improve competitiveness and $50 million for adding to slaughterhouse capacity, reductions in income tax for the 2009 taxation year, money for roads and bridges for municipalities and extending employment insurance benefits.

With the budget providing so many spending incentives, MacKenzie said it’s difficult to pinpoint a few benefits for the riding. Even funding to upgrade the Canadian Coast Guard fleet could be beneficial in the county since there are Oxford industries that made components used in ships.

“It is broad and it is a good budget for Canadians coast to coast,” he said.

It was a big budget for Haldimand-Norfolk MP and Minister of Human Resources and Social Development Diane Finley because one-third of the measures introduced fall under her portfolio. These include: a $2,000 grant for people completing apprentice training in the Red Seal trades, $2 billion in training for both people eligible and non-eligible for employment insurance, an extension of employment insurance benefits and money for social housing.

One of the big items she saw in the budget was the creation of a new Southern Ontario Development Agency with a budget of $1 billion over five years. Such agencies deliver a wide range of projects that help everything from non-profit groups to joint public-private partnerships with the goal to create full-time jobs.

“We were the only part of Canada that didn’t have a development agency,” she said. “I made the case to the finance minister for the area and am delighted he listened. This could help our towns and villages.”

She was pleased with tax relief of $1,365 for the average two-parent two-child family in the 2009 taxation year. A $225 million commitment for high-speed Internet could benefit Norfolk by expanding the service. Finley saw incentives for construction of roads, bridges and home renovation as a job creation tool.

Elgin-Middlesex-London MP Joe Preston’s riding has been particularly hard hit by factory closures. He mentioned measures to lengthen employment insurance while not making businesses pick up the tab, training dollars and the creation of a Southern Ontario development agency as items that could help the unemployed in the riding.
 
He was encouraged by an increase in infrastructure spending, saying one thing heard during budget consultations was municipalities needed assistance with maintaining their assets.

“It means we’ll put people to work, move money quickly and at the end of the day municipalities will have more assets,” Preston said.
 
Preston also sees an opportunity for a couple of the harbours in the area through money set aside to help renovate small craft harbours.

“We’re going to have to go hunting and make our case,” he said. “Since I’ve already been talking to the fisheries minister on small craft harbours, I’m already half-way there.”

The deficit issue

And what about Conservatives creating a $29.5 billion deficit?

“Deficit is not a word Conservatives like to use, but it’s tough times around the world,” MacKenzie said. “There are times government has to make tough decisions and this is one.”

Since the Conservatives have paid the debt down $40 billion, he said there is room for the deficit. He also pointed out there is an end to the deficit and Canada is in the best position of any country.

Asked about the deficit, Finley responded, “These are extraordinary times. Everything we designed is a short-term initiative with long-term benefits.”

Preston said Canadians told the government to spend to kick-start the economy.

“This is a projected deficit that has an end to it,” he said. “We see where it ends and we’ll go back to a surplus. If it ends quickly, then we think we’ll go back to a surplus quicker that we thought.”