Reaction pours in after budget announcement
Posted Mar 22, 2016 4:52 pm.
Last Updated Mar 22, 2016 5:16 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The official opposition was swift to react to the Liberals’ budget.
Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel told 660 NEWS the feds failed to deliver on campaign promises and the government’s priorities are mixed up, at best.
“They cut military funding by 3.7 billion dollars and increased funding to the CBC is a complete lapse in logic to me and I’m just appalled and I’m angry. I’m really angry,” Rempel exclaimed.
“It’s a complete betrayal of Canadians. The Liberals campaigned on a ten billion dollar deficit and a return to balance in four years,” Rempel added. “They completely blew that out of the water by an order of magnitude. The fact that they’re not even ashamed about the fact that they lied to Canadians, I think speaks to their character.”
The chief economist with Dominion Lending Centres says the oilpatch likely isn’t very happy with the federal budget.
Dr. Sherry Cooper told 660 NEWS that’s because of the tens of millions earmarked to green things up.
“This government is not supporting market access and pipelines, clearly,” Cooper said. “It’s been a sea change from the Harper government and in addition, they’re talking about a green economy. They’re talking about providing leadership in environmental changes.”
The budget promises $1 billion dollars over the next four years to support future clean technology investments and another $345 million over five years to Environment and Climate Change Canada.
“Trudeau has been in Washington, talking to Obama. They’ve joined forces for Canada to take action that would reduce the carbon footprint,” Cooper added. “I’m not sure that the oilpatch is going to be happy about that.”
She also told 660 NEWS that she would give the budget one ‘thumb up’.
“It’s pretty good, considering what we could’ve had. It’s certainly similar to what they did campaign upon and so it’s given Canadians what they said at the polls they wanted.”
Calgary’s mayor also provided comment Tuesday, saying overall, he is pleased.
“Because it’s very, very clear that the federal government is stepping in to help municipalities across the country build stuff and it’s important that the provincial governments do their part and don’t take this as an opportunity to step back from building stuff, but I don’t think that the Alberta government will do that.”
Premier Rachel Notley also held a news conference on Tuesday and told reporters that this budget will be similar to what her NDP government unveils Apr. 14.
“We welcome Prime Minister Trudeau’s follow through on his promise to invest in infrastructure,” Notley said. “This compliments the Alberta government’s own strategic investments in infrastructure.”
Notley also said she is not sure if her province got the one-billion-dollar boost in infrastructure money it was seeking in the federal budget.
“There’s a pretty major identification of infrastructure money, but we don’t exactly know how it’s going to be allocated and so, that’s a critical piece that we need to evaluate.”
Indigenous leaders appear to be encouraged with directions being taken by the federal government following the release of the budget.
Tsuu T’ina spokesperson Kevin Littlelight told 660 NEWS that it’ll help them bring much needed things like water and education to their community.
“An educated Aboriginal person has a better world view and we’re more open to building a bigger and better Canada,” Littlelight said.
“Great things are never built overnight, but what it does is it gets the Canadian Aboroginal people saying ‘ok, now we’re being looked at’.”
