Another One Bites the Dust, wheres the alberta advantage?
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009Another One Bites the Dust, wheres the alberta advantage?
Haworth, a multinational manufacturer of office interiors, which operated a show room and factory in Calgary employing 600 people in the city is consolidating its holdings and moving its operations to the state of Michigan. The state of Michigan is close to approving a tax incentive for the company worth $22.4 million, which I am sure it’s very encouraging to a company looking to save money. This means over 600 new jobs will be moving from Calgary, the supposed best place in the world to do business, to another country. This move will also likely cost jobs in to other companies that might have been supplying the local operations of Haworth. This is yet another example of a lost opportunity for the city, I am against taxes but looking at it from a balance sheet perspective the city should be wanting to make the tax pool larger so the individual burden on every one is smaller.
Our city council is much to busy worrying about the peace bridge or the new east side pedestrian walkway (roughly costing 20 million dollars, hrm almost the same amount as the intensive) to focus on encouraging growth in the business sector. Instead of worrying about how the city is going to pay for the alderman’s pet project and where to nickle and dime the tax payers some more to pay for these pet project, the city should be working on slashing spending and removing itself from the “business of being in business” (Mainly the east side project). If the city could cut its spending it could then cut the tax burden on business which would encouraging companies like Haworth to stay and even encourage other multinational corporations to setup shop here when they too are looking to consolidating holdings, this would result in more jobs and more prosperity for Albertans and Calgarians.
Alberta has always has what was called the “Alberta Advantage” which was a business friendly community coupled with governments working in partnership with business to encouraged growth through lower taxes and less regulation. This is no longer the case both the province and municipalities have been finding any reason to tack on user fees or raise taxes. This has completely eliminated our “Alberta Advantage” the province even dropped this as the provincial slogan, its no wonder the unemployment rate is going up in Alberta and that the oil industry in Saskatchewan and British Columbia have an increase in jobs using our model (The model of freedom), we need to realize that the current ruling party is no longer the party of Ralph Kline or even a conservative party for that matter. I encourage every one that values productive jobs and the freemarket to call there alderman or MLA and tell them to lower taxes , remove regulation and just get out of the way of business. Tell them that you want Calgary and Alberta to be the first place of choice for business to open an office and that you want our Alberta Advantage back!
See our resources page for contact information for MLA and Council Member
The Alberta Team!
