Harper’s pledge to create 1.3 million jobs an ‘aspirational goal’

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This article was published 22/09/2015 (3665 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg trucking company served as the backdrop for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s latest economic pledge Tuesday, a vow to create 1.3 million new jobs over the next five years.

Calling it an “aspirational goal,” Harper said he would create the jobs largely through lowering taxes and cutting red tape for businesses.

The Conservatives said that’s a rate of job growth slightly faster than the pace over the last five years, as Canada emerged from the 2008 recession. Harper said he would achieve the target through previously announced measures, such as a cut to the payroll tax, investments in skilled trades training and the new Home Renovation Tax Credit. Harper didn’t announce any new measures Tuesday.

Harper said the jobs created since the recession are 90 per cent full time, more than 80 per cent of them in the private sector and most in high-wage industries.

“I see no reason why we could not replicate those kinds of numbers going forward,” he said.

Harper made his second stop of the campaign in Winnipeg Tuesday morning, taking a photo-op tour of Bison Transport’s warehouse facility off Wellington Avenue near Richardson International Airport and delivering a short speech to workers and Tory supporters.

As he has throughout the campaign, Harper said trusting the NDP or the Liberals with the fragile economy would be reckless.

“Europe has an ongoing debt crisis, economies are slowing, markets are crashing in parts of Asia. This, friends, is the world we live in. It is difficult. It is dangerous. It is an unstable global economy,” Harper told the crowd. “There is no better place to be than right here.”

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Harper also touted his government’s infrastructure spending, and name-checked several large-scale local projects that won federal cash in recent years, including the Plessis Road underpass, CentrePort Canada Way, and the expansion of the RBC Convention Centre. He also mentioned the $155 million Waverley underpass, which the Tories agreed to help fund just days before the campaign began. The underpass has now become Conservative MP Joyce Bateman’s re-election calling card in Winnipeg South Centre, one of the city’s too-close-to-call races.

Harper also used his visit to highlight local candidates, including Elmwood-Transcona MP Lawrence Toet and Saint Boniface-Saint Vital candidate François Catellier.

Toet, who is also in a tough fight to keep his seat, introduced the prime minister, who then mispronounced Toet’s name as “Tate” instead of “Tote.”

“I’m used to Vic Toews,” quipped Harper, after correcting himself.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca