Irving Shipbuilding, Halifax reach new tax deal

Watch above: After a contentious two hours at Regional Council, city councillors passed a new 25-year tax deal with Irving Shipbuilding. Marieke Walsh reports.

HALIFAX – Halifax Regional Council has approved a new municipal tax deal with Irving Shipbuilding.

Under the deal, Irving will pay a fixed rate of $563,000 per year with a one per cent yearly increase. A top up to that base tax rate will be linked to how many full time employees the company hires, once the national shipbuilding program starts. The company will then pay the city $1,000 for each additional full time employee over 1,000 employees. That top up will be capped at $2 million.

In a report, city staff projected that with the new tax deal, Irving would pay $35.17 million in taxes, over the lifetime of the agreement. Despite that, Councillors Jennifer Watts, Stephen Adams, Brad Johns, and Matt Whitman all voted against the deal.

Whitman said under the new deal he doesn’t think Irving will be paying enough in municipal taxes. “They might be our seventh largest taxpayer in the city, I think they should be our number one taxpayer.”

“Yes Nova Scotia is open for business but we don’t need to give away the farm for free,” said Whitman.

But the mayor and city staff rebutted Whitman’s claim.

“It could mean up to $2 million more a year in taxes, and on average it will mean significantly more in taxes, this is a good deal for the city,” said Mayor Mike Savage. “This is not everything that Irving wanted, by any stretch, this is an arrangement that we’ve met that provides certainty to Halifax taxpayers.”