The CEO of the Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce says this provincial budget fell short when it came to implementing measures that will help small business job creators.

Prior to the 2024-25 budget reveal on Wednesday, Jason Aebig compiled a small list of measures that he believed would bolster small and medium sized businesses in Saskatoon. They included the removal of PST on new construction projects, the implementation of a provincial property tax reform, and the creation of an SME investment tax credit. “Those measures did not appear in this budget, so our small business job creators will unfortunately have to wait another budget cycle to see if any of those measures can come to fruition,” Aebig noted.

The list also included the creation of a small business rebate to cover the impacts of property damage and theft. Instead, the budget added another $574 million for mental health and addictions, which Aebig thinks could benefit the city in a similar way. “We would have liked to have seen a direct rebate that would help the bottom lines of small business owners directly, however the investment that was made yesterday, I think, has hope to address this overall challenge going forward.”

However, Aebig says there was some good news as well, which came in the form of a $62 million increase in revenue sharing to the City of Saskatoon, and a freeze of the small business corporate tax rate at 1%. However, a lack of relief and affordability measures has left business owners struggling with pressures such as wage inflation and the cost of doing business.

Overall, Aebig concludes that small business owners were virtually unaffected by this budget, as things didn’t get better for them, but they didn’t get worse, either. “I suppose one could count that as a bit of a win, because we could have seen tax increases in this budget, given that the province is running a deficit.”

The Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce is hosting Finance Minister Donna Harpauer in a post budget luncheon today(Fri) in Saskatoon.