Promises, promises: Education, EI, credit cards

Election promises continued on Tuesday. This time it was the Liberals rolling out the big money programs with a $1-billion post-secondary education plan.

Under the Liberals’ Canadian Learning Passport, every high school graduate headed to university, college or CÉGEP would receive $1,000 per year over four years, tax free. For students from low-income families, that would rise to $1,500 per year.

There is a catch, through; because the plan would be administered through the existing RESP program, only those students that have an RESP could access it.

Advisor tip: If the Liberals somehow pull a win out of the hat, here’s another argument in favour of the RESP.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said the program would be paid for by freezing corporate taxes at 18%, scrapping the Conservative cut to 16.5%.

While the Liberals rolled out an education platform, the Conservatives recommitted to a tax credit that was in the March 22 budget.

The hiring credit for small business will provide a one-time credit of up to $1,000 against the resulting increase in a small employer’s EI premiums in 2011.

The credit is would be available to roughly 525,000 small businesses, and the party claims it would reducing payroll costs by about $165 million.

Meanwhile, the NDP decided that the best way to tackle Canadian household debt was to intervene in the lending industry, limiting credit card interest rates to 5 percentage points above the prime rate.

Advantage: Liberal. Not only are they offering tax-free money to anyone who has the grades to get into community college, they’re telling voters where it will come from: the cancelled corporate tax cut.

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.