- Paul Dechene is duly scathing in comparing the City of Regina's tax giveaways to big business (which are of course added on top of hundreds of millions in provincial tax abatements) to its utter refusal to provide any benefits to non-profit organizations:
Been thinking about building an office tower downtown but not sure if you can afford it? As reported earlier on the Dog Blog, there’s good news on the horizon for you! Executive Committee is meeting this very day — at this very moment, in fact — to help make your office tower more affordable!- Greg Weston points out that Canada has much more to lose than supply management by participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership - including the few points it refused to concede to the U.S. through NAFTA.
They’re voting on an “economic development incentive for construction of downtown office space” to help stimulate the market. The property tax exemption will amount to a 20 per cent discount for three years for new “Class A” and “Class B” (henceforth referred to as “Super Fancy” and “Pretty Darn Fancy”, respectively) office space.
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Now, I know what you’re thinking… A 20 per cent discount?? That’s peanuts. That isn’t nearly enough to get me to build a swank, Fancy Nancy Approved tower downtown!
But what if I told you that that 20 per cent is just the tip of the property tax exemption iceberg? If you can attract some head offices into your new building, they’ll be eligible for some pretty significant exemptions as well.
Remember Mosaic, for instance? We wrote about them last December. You know how much property tax is being paid on their portion of the soon-to-be-built Hill Tower III?
Zip! Nada! Nothing!
They got a full one hundred per cent property tax discount — even though at the time they only qualified for an already-hefty 75 per cent discount — because council likes them so much. Now that deal seems to have been cut kind of on the fly, so who knows what kind of sweet deals you and your tenants will be offered.
That is, unless they’re a non-corporate, non-head-office kind of tenant. Those guys can’t count on anything. As we mentioned in the Mosaic piece from December, Souls Harbour sought a tax exemption on some property of theirs but were turned down because no one is even contemplating a tax exemption for their type of work. And more recently, (at the Nov 8 council meeting in fact) the Saskatchewan Abilities Council — a registered charity that helps people with disabilities — requested a tax exemption on some property they own but were turned down for lack of a specific program to grant such an exemption.
But lack of a specific program at the time didn’t stop council from giving Mosaic an extra 25 per cent off their property tax bill, amirite?
I mean, it’s not like non-profits and all their do-goodery contribute anything to the community in the form of dollars and cents.
- And as Michael Den Tandt notes, those apparent concessions - sold as being the result of our lacking any bargaining power - are utterly unnecessary given Canada's importance for the U.S.' economy.
- Finally, it's great to see Canadians are fairly skeptical of political advertising. But I'd be curious to see how ads affect viewers in ways they may not appreciate at the time - particularly in the case of long-term negative campaigns which seem to be depressingly effective at branding leaders even when their content isn't seen as accurate or reasonable.
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