Right next door to the riding of Saint John Rothesay, represented by rebel MP Wayne Long, is the riding of Fundy Royal which is where the federal finance minister made a recent announcement on tax changes.
It’s represented by MP Alaina Lockhart who’s also the parliamentary secretary for small business and tourism and she tells us she’s supportive of what they’re trying to do as a government which she says is to make sure they have a level playing field and there aren’t special advantages for those who are wealthy, and her approach to this was to stay engaged in the process.
“To make sure that I had as many one-on-one conversations with business owners so that I could understand exactly what their concerns were by doing so I had the opportunity to make sure that that was reflected in policy going forward,” says Lockhart.
“So, this wasn’t a matter on us [her and Wayne Long] being on the opposite sides of things, certainly we were both working towards representing our constituents the best way that we knew how.
Lockhart is a former small business owner and says her government’s proposed tax reform measures wouldn’t have impacted her business, as she says is the case with 85-percent of business owners. Lockhart says they were actively investing any income into the business, Lockhart’s Weddings and Special Occasions, and her husband worked actively in the business.
“At first glance when I went through it, I didn’t see the impact to me and as I talked to more and more business owners their current situation, I found more and more of them wouldn’t be impacted as well,”says Lockhart.
“But we have all that spirit and drive to grow so we needed to make sure there was room to do that as well.”
