Infrastructure development, business red tape, corporate taxation and BC Liberals’ policies are top-watched issues for businesses in the leadup to the May 14 provincial election, according to a new Business in Vancouver-Ipsos survey.
The survey, conducted between March 4 and March 11, asked respondents to identify the top three business issues they’d like to see addressed in election campaigns.
BC Liberal government policies topped the issues businesses are watching in the election run-up, with 41% of respondents ranking it in their top three. Infrastructure development took second place (35%), followed by business red tape (25%), corporate taxation (24%) and the carbon tax (22%).
Werner Antweiler, an associate professor at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, said the top-ranking survey item, BC Liberal government policies, is hard to interpret without more specifics. He posited that a key item being considered there was the Liberals’ implementation of the HST and its replacement with the return to the PST on April 1.
He said the back-and-forth process has cost businesses all the way along.
“Some businesses were frustrated when the PST was scrapped and they had to implement HST in the service sector, “ he said. “Now going back, it’s frustrated a lot of manufacturing businesses because the HST was a very meaningful tax reform for them that streamlined the operation; they’re going to lose that and now have to reintroduce the PST, and that’s a major hassle and a burden.”
Antweiler said the emphasis that surveyed businesses are placing on infrastructure development is an “important” research finding.
“Infrastructure standing out that highly came as a little bit of a surprise; usually you hear companies complaining about taxation and red tape.”
Antweiler added that the focus of businesses on infrastructure development shows that B.C. companies are pushing for a “forward-looking” investment environment.
“As we’re expanding our economy in certain sectors and the Lower Mainland population is expanding, there is a need to think forward and look at how we are going to get goods and people around in a more effective manner.”
Like Antweiler, Business Council of BC (BCBC) executive vice-president Jock Finlayson said it’s hard to interpret which issues are being watched under the BC Liberal government policies mantle. But he said the survey’s other top-ranking issues align with what the BCBC is hearing.
“Infrastructure, red tape [or] regulation and business taxes emerge as important issues for the BIV respondents, which makes sense and is broadly consistent with what I see and hear in my own work.”
Finlayson added, however, that for many BCBC members, talent recruitment and retention – which ranks sixth in the BIV-Ipsos survey – is “at or very near the top of the priority list.”
“Also in the top-three list for many of our members,” he said, “are overall tax competitiveness – particularly given the return of the PST – and challenges around ‘social licence to operate,’ which are of particular relevance for companies in the natural resource, transportation and manufacturing sectors as well as for providers of infrastructure services, for example pipelines and ports.”
