According to the Canadian Steel Producers Association (CSPA), the federal budget introduced Wednesday by Finance Minister Joe Oliver includes several key measures that are important to the competitive prospects for Canada’s $14 billion steel industry.
“Budget 2015 includes commitments that our industry has strongly supported as essential to strengthening our market and investment prospects,” said CSPA President Ron Watkins. “The Budget projects an imminent return to fiscal balance, an overarching feature that strengthens competitive basics for Canadian manufacturing. In addition, it includes a number of more specific measures that are of special significance to the Canadian steel industry”.
Watkins highlighted four specific measures, all of which are high priorities in CSPA’s ‘pro-manufacturing’ Public Policy Agenda:
• The commitment to ensuring an effective trade remedy system, thus improving the ability of the government and domestic manufacturers to challenge unfairly traded imports to help ensure that market-based competition prevails in Canada’s own market. This is an essential domestic dimension of Canada’s ambitious pro-trade agenda.
• The 10-year extension of the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (ACCA), that CSPA and other Canadian manufacturing sectors have strongly supported as a means to strengthen the ability of Canadian producers to invest in new machinery and equipment, thus improving productivity, innovation, and environmental performance.
• The establishment of specific accelerated tax depreciation rates to strengthen the investment case for developing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry and exports from British Columbia to global markets. Because steel is the material backbone of the LNG supply chain, the fiscal provisions to stimulate the LNG sector can generate strong economic benefits across Canada as these projects proceed.
• A multi-year commitment to major funding support for investments in infrastructure, creating additional market opportunity for multiple types of high-quality, Canadian steel products.
“We commend the Minister for proceeding with the promised improvements to Canada’s trade remedy system, to counter the injury to Canadian manufacturers from dumped and subsidized steel imports from abroad,” said Ron Watkins. “These changes are absolutely timely, as we face growing levels of unfairly-traded imports, massive and growing overcapacity in the global steel industry, and increased efforts to evade duties on dumped and subsidized imports.”