N.S. premier says key election promise may no longer be possible

Premier Tim Houston says the better paycheque guarantee, a key election promise intended to get companies to hire more people or pay existing employees more money, may no longer be possible.

"We'll continue to assess whether that's still an appropriate tool to meet the objective that we're trying to meet," Houston told reporters at Province House on Friday.

"I'm not sure today that it goes forward as it was in the platform documents, but those assessments are continuing to be done."

When he announced it ahead of the 2021 provincial election campaign, Houston said the program would see corporations get 50 per cent of their corporate taxes returned in exchange for passing those savings along to workers, excluding the top 20 per cent of earners, or hiring more people.

'Priorities shift'

However, getting that program off the ground, which is estimated to cost $200 million a year, has proved difficult. With more $1.7 billion recently pledged for housing programs and even more committed to new health-care infrastructure, the premier acknowledged on Friday that there might not be the money available to do the program as advertised.

"There are lots of priorities in government and those priorities shift," he said.

"It could be the case on this one, I'll say that. We'll continue to assess the best way to meet the objectives."

Liberal Leader Zach Churchill said he never thought the guarantee was going to happen because it amounted to subsidizing paycheques for the private sector.

"I think he's not moving forward with it because it was a stupid idea to begin with and something that he couldn't implement," Churchill told reporters.

If the government wants to provide people with a better paycheque, it could be achieved through the reduction of fees, cutting income tax or indexing income taxes to inflation, Churchill said.

The latter is an idea the Liberals dismissed when they were in government, but Churchill said it makes sense now at a time when the province faces the highest inflation and rental increases in the country and power rates are poised to increase.

"There couldn't be a more urgent time to reduce the tax burden on Nova Scotians than right now.

NDP Leader Claudia Chender said the Tory promise was "a plan that never made any sense to begin with."

"It was never clear how it was going to benefit workers, how it was going to ensure that people made a living wage and how it was in fact going to make their paycheques better," she told reporters.

Chender said targeted and immediate steps to help people with the cost of living are what's required. She suggested the government waive pharmacare fees for seniors and families and remove the tax on groceries.

"We know that people are choosing between food and medicine. This is an affordability measure that would make a massive difference both in fixing health care, which is what this government was elected to do, and also in helping people make ends meet."

Houston said the intent of the program was to make sure people earned more money and could keep more money.

He said the government has been able to do that through recent contract agreements with workers such as nurses, a raise the government provided continuing-care assistants and a program for people younger than 30 in the trades to save on taxes.

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