Presented 11 February 2014 Party Conservative | Parliament 41st Finance minister Jim Flaherty | |
Total revenue 276.3 billion (requested) Total expenditures 279.2 billion (requested) | ||
The Canadian federal budget for fiscal year 2014–2015 was presented to the Canadian House of Commons by Jim Flaherty on 11 February 2014. This was the last budget presented by the Finance Minister before his resignation in March and death in April.
Contents
Programs
The budget cut C$3,100,000,000 from the Department of National Defence budget allocated for procurement of equipment via the Canada First Defence Strategy. Flaherty stated the funds will be restored in the future when "key purchases will be made".
The government plans to establish the National Disaster Mitigation Program, which it will begin funding in the 2015–2016 fiscal year in the 2015 budget. The program "will invest in structural mitigation projects" and provide residential flood insurance in conjunction with provincial, territorial, and private insurance plans.
The budget will establish the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, which will receive $50 million in the 2015–2016 fiscal year for research funding at post-secondary institutions. Four grant councils, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, will receive a combined $46 million annually.
Taxes and tariffs
The proposed budget will increase excise taxes on cigars, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and tobacco sticks, and will also impose a tax increase on duty-free tobacco products. Flaherty stated that the increase was to account for the effects of inflation since 2002, will be indexed to inflation every five years, and will take effect 12 February 2014. The budget allocates $92 million of tobacco tax revenues over five years to establish the Geospatial Intelligence and Automated Dispatch Centre and to install sensors to detect movement of contraband tobacco products in high-risk areas.
The budget includes a reduction in sick leave benefits for public servants, a doubling of the Public Service Health Care Plan premium for retired civil servants, and increasing eligibility requirements to reduce enrollment in the program. The government also expects to replace the sick leave benefit program with a short-term disability program in future collective bargaining with public sector unions, and has included in the budget the expected compensation savings from that change.
The small business hiring tax credit is eliminated by the budget, as is the tariff for mobile offshore drilling systems.
The tax credit for adopting children will be increased to C$15,000. Search and rescue personnel with 200 hours of service per year will receive a tax credit similar to that received by volunteer fire fighters in the 2011 budget.
"Immigration trusts" were eliminated by the budget. These trusts were used by immigrants to shelter investment income from Canadian income tax. Graduated tax rates for testamentary trusts were also eliminated.
Business
The Automotive Innovation Fund will be increased by $500 million over two years. The budget also allocates $78 million per year for five years for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to improve inspections and establish the Food Safety Information Network.
The budget bill also included a proposal to update some regulations. The Food and Drug Regulations will be amended to redefine the term beer to "reflect innovation" in brewing. It will update the compositional standards, allowing the use of flavouring ingredients such as nutmeg by craft breweries.
Intellectual property laws relating to trademarks, service marks, and patents will be changed for consistency with the Madrid Protocol, the Singapore Treaty, the Nice Agreement, the Patent Law Treaty, and the Hague Agreement.
The budget document also stated that Service Canada would operate the Canada Job Grant, which had been announced in the 2013 federal budget, in jurisdictions with which the federal government failed to secure agreements.