New Transit Corporation for Nova Scotia

By CLARE MELLOR Staff Reporter

Chronicle Herald

A new Crown transit corpora­tion that would develop afforda­ble transportation to link Nova Scotia’s rural communities with Halifax is one of the major items in an alternative provincial bud­get released earlier this week.

The transit corporation, which calls for an initial $20-million investment and $6 million annually in following years, is just one of three new Crown corporations proposed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in its alternative budget.

“It would link communities up in a much better way,” Kyle Bu­ott, a member of the working group that crafted the alterna­tive budget, said Tuesday.

The centre is an independent research institute concerned with social, environmental and economic justice. Each year, it releases an alternative budget in advance of the provincial bud­get.

The 2010 alternative budget calls for $150.3 million in new spending. The proposed budget would dish out a one-time invest­ment of $15 million for a Crown corporation that would operate a public auto insurance system and a $15-million initial invest­ment (followed by $10 million an­nually in subsequent years) for a workers’ co-operative corpora­tion that would create jobs All three new Crown corpora­tions, and especially the transit one, will create “a very big eco­nomic advantage” for the prov­ince, Buott said Tuesday.

“We currently have a major problem in this province with public transportation. Acadian Lines is trying to cut off some of the lines that it is required to car­ry. Again, we lost the Cat ferry this year as well. So we need to continue looking at getting ac­cess to public transportation in rural areas.”

The transit Crown entity, item­ized in the budget, is based on one set up in Saskatchewan in 1946. Saskatchewan Transit Co. operates 29 bus routes and a fleet of 44 motor coaches that serve 283 communities, Buott said.

The NDP government will re­lease its provincial budget on April 6, and there are concerns about how it will handle the province’s growing deficit.

The alternative budget shows that the province can generate $523 million in revenue by in­creasing personal income tax rates for the wealthiest 40 per cent of Nova Scotians, closing corporate tax loopholes and by expanding the economy, said Charlene Croft, chairwoman of the alternative budget working group.

“The ways that taxes are ad­ministered in the province are not as fair and progressive as they could be,” Croft said Tues­day. “We have proposed alterna­tives, particularly around in­come tax and corporate tax ex­penditures, which we feel the government could explore as a means to tackle the structural deficit that they say they are fac­ing.

“An increase in sales tax is ac­tually a very regressive type of tax because it burdens the poor more.”

The alternative budget esti­mates the government could raise $44 million through fixing corporate tax loopholes and an­other $399 million by overhaul­ing personal income tax rates.

It was not part of its platform in the last election, but the pro­vincial NDP has campaigned on public auto insurance in earlier elections, said Buott.

“Auto insurance rates contin­ue to rise in this province. I think it will re-emerge as a major pub­lic policy over the next couple of years. . . . This (public system) is the best way to ensure that con­sumers from being gouged.”

The alternative budget’s pro­posed annual investment in a workers co-operative corpora­tion is about half of what the province’s business develop­ment agency, Nova Scotia Busi­ness Inc., receives each year, Bu­ott said.

It would essentially be “a job creation program’’ providing startup loans and training to workers that want to form co-op­eratives.

“Co-operatives, in general, of course, are a much more stable source of employment, and all the money that those co-oper­atives make stays in the province and gets reinvested here,” Buott said.

More details about the alterna­tive budget can be found at www. policyalternatives. ca.