A budget for all

This is the 2009 Budget for those wondering. A budget for a country attempting to dig its way out of the Credit Sinkhole of 2008. At the time, I was still unemployed too.

That is what Minister Flaherty has created, a budget for every single person in Canada (or at least everyone in Canada will be touched in some fashion or another). This is an all-encompassing and broad sweeping budget to kick start the economy (hopefully) and drive the government back into the glory days of the ’70s for racking up massive deficits ($33.7 B this year alone) (my opinion).

Budget Things that are Good For Me

Since I personalize things usually, here is a list of things in the budget that is a good thing for me:

• EI payments will be extended by 5 weeks, which is great, except I haven’t started collecting E.I. yet, but it is good to know that if I need it, I will be getting it for a longer period of time.
• $8.3 billion for the Canada Skills and Transition Strategy, this is a good thing, since it helps unemployed folks like me get retrained and learn new certifications and skills (I am currently working on I.T.I.L. base certification and will move on to more technical training soon, as part of a provincial training program).
• Basic personal tax exemption for this tax year goes from $9,600 to $10,320, not a bad thing making $720 more not taxed!
• Tax brackets move up with (quoted from CBC) “…The upper limit for the 15 per cent bracket would go to $40,726, while the upper income limit for the 22 per cent bracket would rise to $81,452….”.
• Some very vague statements about “Mortgage Insurance” that we couldn’t really decypher (whether it pertained to CMHC insurance or the insurance banks offer on their mortgages).
• Tax relief for home improvement projects up to $1350 (if you spend $10000 or more) but only for this year and only for work done starting today.
• Adding CDIC support for TFSA accounts. This one surprised me, since I thought that was already in place, but I am very happy to know my TFSA is insured like a bank account is.
• “…Extending the Wage Earner Protection Program to cover severance and termination pay owed to eligible workers impacted by employers’ bankruptcy….”  which should help Nortel employees in specific, but not by much.
• EI Rates are now frozen for a while, which is cool.

And a lot of other rhetoric and vagaries that confuses me.

I got to read the Budget document when Larry MacDonald showed it to me, which was kind of cool, but he kept it. 

Is this budget going to help? I don’t know. Are the Liberals going to vote it down? I don’t know, but don’t worry, all that will give me much more to write about in the next few days, so stay tuned.