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The time to create new job opportunities and help working families is NOW!

Howard Hampton and Ontario’s NDP have a plan to turn the McGuinty Liberals' sorry record of 200,000 manufacturing jobs lost into sustained job gains across our province.

Invest Federal funds in our hard hit communities now - A Labour Market Partners Forum involving labour, business and government should be convened immediately to make recommendations on a wide variety of labour market initiatives and to offer advice on how to allocate the approximately $400 million flowing from the federal government’s “Vulnerable Communities” Assistance Package. This money is desperately needed in our hard hit manufacturing and resource communities now and all labour market partners must be at the table to decide how it can best be spent and to get it to our communities as quickly as possible.

Successful economies have mechanisms to bring together labour market partners to consider broad trends and developments and advise government on appropriate responses and initiatives. Long-term, there is an urgent need for a permanent multi-stakeholder advisory body on labour market development issues, as jurisdictions like Ireland, Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador have introduced.
 
2. Institute a Buy Ontario Program

Institute a “Buy-Ontario” Program- Governments all over the world protect local jobs through effective “Buy Local “ policies. Ontario needs a “Buy Ontario” program that would ensure that the billions of dollars in transit and other infrastructure investments create good-paying jobs in Ontario and not in far away places. A study by the CAW suggests that it is possible to have a far higher level of domestic content than the 25 per cent now required by the TTC for its streetcar purchase and still allow for healthy competition. Under the NDP “Buy Ontario” program, specific domestic content levels would be designated for both Ontario and Canada for transit and other categories of public spending such as health and education.
 
3. Ontario Manufacturing Tax Credit

Manufacturing and Resource Investment Tax Credit - Create a jobs focused Manitoba-style investment tax credit that would encourage manufacturers and processors to make capital investments and create jobs. The credit would be 10 per cent of investments in new machinery, buildings and equipment and would be available to all manufacturers and processors making eligible and verifiable investments that result in good-paying jobs. An added incentive of a 20 per cent credit would be available for investments in green industry jobs.
 
The credit would be 100 per cent refundable over the next two years and would be reviewed to see if full refundability should continue. Based on the Manitoba experience, the cost of the credit would be approximately $450 million annually.
 
Nationally recognized economist Hugh Mackenzie comments on Ontario’s NDP investment tax credit
 
“At a time of general economic slowdown in North America, the issue before Government as far as manufacturing in Ontario is concerned is not so much what government might do to reverse that general slowdown, but what the government might do to influence corporate decisions being made in response to that slowdown that have longer-term implications for manufacturing in this province.
 
In other words, there is very little that Ontario can do to replenish depleted order books now; what Ontario should be doing is working to influence investment decisions and thereby strengthen manufacturers’ commitment to Ontario in the longer term.
 
The key question is, what can Ontario do that might be effective? Business-oriented think tanks, business organizations and the professional lobbyists they employ have responded to the round of economic pressure on the manufacturing sector, predictably, by using the current downturn as yet another argument for a general reductions in the taxes paid by business.
 
The principal problem with this position is that there is no concrete evidence that reduced general levels of taxation actually give rise to increased investment in machinery and equipment in the manufacturing sector. Indeed, the evidence since general corporate tax rate cuts began after the year 2000 is that lower tax rates do not give rise to increased levels of investment.
 
Investment tax credits are much more promising as a way to stimulate critical new investments because they provide increased cash flow that is directly targeted to investment. In addition, because they can be made refundable as is proposed in the NDP plan (i.e., payable in cash as credits rather than offset against tax that would otherwise be payable) they can be effective immediately even in an adverse economic environment in which many manufacturing corporations are unable to generate taxable income.”