The PCs have been criticized by opposition parties, labour groups and regular Albertans for sparing corporations of tax hikes in the provincial budget, but Calgary’s mayor said they actually did increase them.

Naheed Nenshi said by looking at the increase on non-residential property taxes, Jim Prentice did make businesses pay more despite their claims to the contrary.

“We’ve heard for weeks and weeks and weeks that increases to corporate taxes are a job killer and yet, that very same premier increased what I consider to be the most unfair corporate tax,” he said as Calgary’s council was deciding on what it’s final property tax increases would be for both residential and non-residential buildings.

“Our decision now has to be do we want to take residential taxpayers money and use that to mitigate this giant increase in corporate taxes or do we want to leave it as is?” Nenshi said before the vote.

According to the city, the provincial government requested a 3.8 per-cent hike to school taxes on residential properties, but 8.2 per-cent on non-residential properties.

Council eventually settled on 4.2 per cent for residential and 5.4 for businesses.

The 4.2 was down from the original 4.5 per cent increase approved last fall, which ultimately changed because of the provincial tax hikes.

The city still could’ve decided to go with 4.5, which would’ve equalled $3 million in tax room, but ultimately council to give homeowners the break.

Prentice has defended the budget since it was dropped, saying multiple times that increasing corporate taxes would hurt the economy.

“Most corporate tax are paid by small companies, they’re paid by people we know on the streets and it’s pretty clear if you raise corporate tax you’re going to lose jobs,” he said March 27th “It’ll be a big mistake to create a job-killing tax that would drive investment away, that’s what the NDP want to do and this won’t solve the problem, an increase in tax would raise only $400 million which would only be 10 per cent of the problem.”

But Nenshi remained firm this wasn’t splitting hairs.

“Not in a certain way, they absolutely have,” he said, pointing to the 8.2 per cent in non-residential property tax in Calgary.

Nenshi did point out it doesn’t equate to an enormous amount of money, but it’s an increase nonetheless.

“But I just find it odd that we’re in a situation where city council is deciding whether or not to mitigate corporate tax increases from a provincial government that said they didn’t believe in corporate tax increases,” he said.

Asked for comment, Diana McQueen, PC candidate for Drayton Valley-Devon and recent municipal affairs minister, said the funding formula with regards to provincial education property tax did not change.

“It fluctuates depending on the growth in different communities, but overall for the province of Alberta, that funding formula did not change,” she said. “That fluctuates, always in different municipalities, so we made an effort not to make any changes to that, because we didn’t want to see changes made there, in addition to the other funding that we kept whole for municipalities.”