The Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal presents its recommendations as part of 2018-2019 prebudget consultations by the Government of Québec.
Continue Québec’s economic momentum for 2018-2019
Québec and the metropolitan area are on an economic roll. We need to do everything we can to keep the momentum going.
Build growth on solid economic foundations
Given Québec’s unprecedented economic vitality and the favourable North American economic situation, the government has to create the conditions to make it possible to sustain this rate of growth in the long term.
The Chamber applauds the government on its control of public finances. The government now has considerable, and necessary, budgetary leeway. The Chamber believes that it must use it to strengthen the economy and stimulate investment.
Furthermore, certain risks continue to weigh on our economy, such as our weakened competitiveness following American tax reform, the possible end of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the effects of the accelerated demographic crunch. The next budget has to take into account these risks.
This is why the Chamber believes that five priority measures must be taken to maintain confidence and economic momentum.
Five priority areas
- Place priority on education by continuing reinvestments and earmarking additional amounts to retrain talent and integrate immigrants to the workforce.
- Reduce the tax burden of individuals and small business by adjusting our tax system to deal with its weakening by the American tax reform.
- Broaden support for investment in innovation by committing additional funds to support projects that offer a great deal of potential for economic growth that were not selected as part of the Government of Canada’s supercluster competition.
- Continue the government’s infrastructure commitments by acting faster to distribute amounts allocated to projects to prevent delays.
- Invest in the internationalization of the business base by diversifying business access to markets, particularly markets involved in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and by creating a special fund to deal with the economic blow created by the end of NAFTA.
By focusing on these five priorities in the next budget, the government could introduce measures to sustainably maintain Québec’s economic momentum.