The Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) sent its OCC Pre-Budget Submission 2011 to the provincial Standing Committee on Economic Affairs and Finance on February 1, 2011, recommending that the Ontario government make fiscal and regulatory reform a top priority in order to enhance innovation and reduce the productivity gap in the province and enhance innovation.
The OCC urges the government to continue to remove all provincial sales taxes on business and lower corporate income taxes in order to attract investment to Ontario. Such investment stimulates economic activity, create jobs and pay dividends to the province by means of higher future tax revenues.
More progress should be made to reduce the regulatory burden on business. The largest barrier to Ontario’s business competitiveness, according to OCC members, is the cost of doing business due to red tape. To this end, the OCC is recommending that government accelerate its efforts with regards to the previously announced Open for Business Initiative and implement clear measures to reduce the regulatory burden, as well as avoid further increases in unnecessary regulation in the future.
Finally, the OCC’s members identified the province’s fiscal situation as a significant impediment to Ontario’s prosperity. The OCC asks the government to accelerate the pace for balancing its budgetary deficit by 2015-16, before the end of the current business cycle. Such action will also maintain Ontario’s dept-GDP ratio in a reasonable range over the next five years.
For more information on the OCC’s 2010 Prebudget Submission, please contact Kelly Pritchard, Policy Analyst at kellypritchard@occ.on.ca.
