Nudging Us to Conservatism

Conservative budget cuts | BCBusiness
Last week’s Conservative budget could be a boon for small businesses.

Last week’s supposedly tough Tory budget turned out to be one that just about everyone could love, especially those involved in small businesses.

Let me start this budget analysis by saying that I love the CBC. I like its quirky viewpoint on the world. I like its wide-ranging reporting on all kinds of subjects. I could listen to CBC radio all day.

So, I’m pretty upset that the federal government is cutting the CBC’s budget.

But since my fellow CBC fans and I don’t exactly constitute a huge block of voters, the CBC cuts announced in last week’s federal budget will probably go ahead without a whimper of complaint.

If so, it will join every other “cut” in a budget that was so carefully aimed at not upsetting anyone (except us CBC fans, who the Conservatives hope will just go away), it was almost innocuous.

I’m not saying it should have been savage, but the government did hint regularly that it would be a tough one. Once it came out, all their enemies would definitively recognize that conservatism is back, baby!

Well, hardly. It was a pussycat – displaying a small-c kind of Canadian conservatism that, below the border, would have been seen as dangerously socialist.

But, enough about that. It was definitely a small-business-friendly budget.

Of particular interest to B.C. were changes in the country’s innovation plans, which, frankly haven’t been very innovative up to now. Canada currently places among the lowest of the G20 nations when it comes to innovation, so something obviously had to be done.

And that something appears to be a move to streamline and simplify the Scientific Research and Education Development program. This program, which is aimed at smaller and younger companies, primarily in technology – who together make up a big chunk of the B.C. economy – provides tax credits for companies engaged in designing new technology or innovation.

At a certain level, SR&ED provides a great proportion of these companies’ income, so there was some fear around when it was hinted that SR&ED would be cut.

But instead, the budget simplified it and made it easier (and cheaper) to apply for SR&ED credits. It also threw half a billion dollars at other business innovation support programs.

Say what you will about the concept of governments helping business, but if it will help nudge this country further away from the suffocating government bureaucratism of the past and create a little more operational freedom for business, I’m all for it.