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For immediate release LIBERALS VOTE DOWN HARDEMAN’S JOB PROTECTION RESOLUTION QUEEN’S PARK - Today in the Ontario Legislature the Liberal government voted down a resolution introduced by Ernie Hardeman, MPP for Oxford, to protect Ontario jobs starting with repealing the new diamond mine tax. “Last month we saw 13,000 manufacturing jobs lost across the province; last week we saw 55 jobs lost in Oxford. The government should be taking action to keep jobs here in Ontario, not introducing more job killing taxation and regulation,” said Hardeman. The resolution read as follows: “I know a lot of people think of diamonds as a luxury item, but what we are really talking about isn’t diamonds – it is jobs and investment,” said Hardeman. When the De Beers mine is operating at full capacity it will employ 400 people. In addition the mine is creating hundreds of construction jobs and many more jobs through economic spin-offs. In the same survey 86.7% of respondents said they thought Ontario taxes were too high. In the 2003 election campaign Dalton McGuinty campaigned on the promise not to raise taxes. In the first budget he introduced the single largest tax increase in Ontario’s history. Similarly when Dalton McGuinty boasted of Ontario’s low mining taxes until De Beers had invested significantly in the Victor Mine and then more than doubled the tax rate. “Although high taxes are concern for businesses, the equally important issue is that the province more than doubled the tax rate without warning after this company invested $1 billion in creating the mine,” said Hardeman. “In the global economy businesses have a lot of choice on where to locate. They won’t invest in a jurisdiction where things like that occur and they can’t trust the government.”
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