Speech
Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere pleasure to join this debate on Bill C-30, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19, 2021 and other measures.
Check against delivery
Mr. Speaker, it is my sincere pleasure to join this debate on Bill C-30, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 19, 2021 and other measures.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have done everything necessary to protect Canadians’ health and safety, to help businesses weather the storm and to position our country for a strong recovery. After 14 months of uncertainty and hardship, Canadians continue to fight COVID-19 with determination and courage.
Right now we are being hit hard by the third wave, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. More and more Canadians are getting vaccinated. The recovery is around the corner. The bill before us today would implement our plan to finish the fight against COVID-19, create jobs, grow the economy and ensure a robust recovery from which all Canadians would benefit.
The budget I presented to the House on April 19 contains further details about the plan. The budget focuses on middle-class Canadians and workers and seeks to help more Canadians join the middle class. It is also in line with the global shift to a green, clean economy.
This plan, Mr. Speaker, will help Canadians and Canadian businesses heal the wounds left by COVID and come back stronger than ever.
This budget meets three fundamental challenges.
First, we must conquer COVID. That means buying vaccines and supporting provincial and territorial health care systems. It means enforcing quarantine rules at the border and within the country. It means providing Canadians and Canadian businesses with the support they need to get through these final lockdowns.Â
Second, we must punch our way out of the COVID recession. That means ensuring that lost jobs are recovered as swiftly as possible, and hard-hit businesses rebound quickly.
It means providing support where COVID has hit hardest – to women, to young people, to racialized Canadians and low-wage workers, and to small and medium-sized businesses, especially in tourism and hospitality.
When fully enacted, this budget will create, in total, nearly 500,000 new training and work opportunities for Canadians.
Third, the major challenge is to build a more resilient Canada; better, more fair, more prosperous, and more innovative.
That means investing in Canada’s green transition and the green jobs that go with it; in Canada’s digital transformation and in Canadian innovation; and it means building infrastructure for a dynamic, growing country.
This budget invests in social infrastructure and in physical infrastructure. It invests in human capital, and in physical capital. It invests in Canadians and it invests in Canada.
Vaccine campaigns are accelerating. And that is such a good thing. But we need to vaccinate even more Canadians, even more quickly. Thanks to plentiful and growing vaccine supply, that is something that Team Canada can get done, working together.
This legislation proposes a one-time payment of $1 billion to provinces and territories to reinforce and roll out vaccination programs.
Canadians should take advantage of our increasing vaccine supply and, when it is their turn, go and get the first Health Canada-approved vaccine available to them.
I was vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine nine days ago at a Toronto pharmacy, and I am so grateful I was able to be vaccinated when it was my turn.
COVID-19 has placed extreme pressure on health care systems across the country. The pandemic is still with us and Canadians do need help urgently.
That is why we propose to provide $4 billion through the Canada Health Transfer to help provinces and territories address immediate health care system pressures.
These funds are in addition to our unprecedented investments in the health care systems during the pandemic, including the $13.8 billion invested in health care under the Safe Restart Agreement.
A full recovery from this pandemic requires a new, long-term investment in social infrastructure – from early learning and child care, to student grants to income top-ups – so the middle class can flourish and so that more Canadians can join it.
COVID-19 has brutally exposed what women have long known: without child care, parents – usually mothers – cannot work outside the home.
A cornerstone of our jobs and growth plan is an historic investment of $30 billion over five years, reaching $9.2 billion annually in permanent investments when combined with previous commitments, to build a high-quality, affordable and accessible early learning and child care system across Canada.
Within five years, families everywhere in Canada should have access to high-quality child care, for an average of $10 a day.
This will help increase parents’, especially women’s, participation in the workforce. It will create jobs for child care workers, more than 95 per cent of whom are women. It will give every child in Canada the best possible start in life.
Early learning and child care has long been a feminist issue; COVID has shown us that it is an urgent economic issue, as well.
As we make this historic commitment, I would like to thank the visionary leaders in Quebec, and in particular Quebec feminists, who led the way for the rest of Canada.
Of course, the plan also includes additional resources for Quebec that could be used to provide further support for its early learning and child care system, a system that is already the envy of the rest of Canada and, indeed, much of the world.
We also recognize the continuing need to bridge Canadians and Canadian businesses through this tough third wave of the virus and into a full recovery.
To date, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy has helped more than 5.3 million Canadians keep their jobs. The Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy and Lockdown Support have helped more than 175,000 organizations with rent, mortgage, and other expenses.
The wage subsidy, rent subsidy, and Lockdown Support were set to expire in June 2021.
Bill C-30 extends these measures through to September 25, 2021, for a total of $12.1 billion in additional support.
Extending this support will mean that millions of jobs will be protected – as they have been throughout this crisis.
To help people who still cannot work, we also propose maintaining flexible access to employment insurance benefits for another year, until fall 2022.
We also plan to extend the number of weeks for certain major income support measures, including the Canada Recovery Benefit and the Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit.
We are providing an extra 12 weeks of benefits to recipients of the Canada Recovery Benefit, which was created to help Canadians who are not eligible for employment insurance.
Bill C-30 also proposes extending the Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit by 4 weeks, up to a maximum of 42 weeks at $500 a week. This will help when the economy begins its safe reopening.
For caregivers who cannot find a solution, especially those who take care of children, the Employment Insurance Sickness Benefit will be extended from 15 to 26 weeks.
Canada’s prosperity depends on every Canadian having a fair chance to join the middle class. Low-wage workers in Canada work harder than anyone else in the country and for less pay. In the past year they have faced both significant infection risks and job losses.
Many live below the poverty line, even though they work full-time. We are Canadians, and this should not be acceptable to any of us.
Through Bill C-30, we propose to expand the Canada Workers Benefit, to invest $8.9 billion over six years in additional support for low-wage workers. This will extend income top-ups to about a million more workers and will lift nearly 100,000 Canadians out of poverty.
This legislation will also introduce a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.
Young people have made extraordinary sacrifices over this past year, to keep us, their elders, safe. We must not and we will not allow them to become a lost generation.
Bill C-30 would make college and university more accessible and affordable.
This legislation will extend the waiver of interest on federal student and apprentice loans to March 2023. Waiving the interest on student loans will provide savings for the approximately 1.5 million Canadians repaying student loans.
In the past 14 months, no one has felt the devastating health effects of COVID-19 more than seniors. They deserve a safe, secure and dignified retirement. We therefore propose a one-time payment of $500 in August 2021 to old age security recipients who will be 75 or over in June 2022.
Bill C-30 also includes a permanent 10% increase in the old age security benefit for people aged 75 and over as of July 2022.
Small businesses are the cornerstone of our economy and of every main street in Canada. Lockdowns, though necessary, have hit them hardest. To heal the wounds left by COVID, we have to put a small business rescue plan into action as well as a long-term plan to help them grow.
In addition to extending the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy and Lockdown Support, we also have to make sure that the hardest-hit businesses pivot back to growth and stay on track.
Bill C-30 proposes the new Canada Recovery Hiring Program, which will run from June to November and make it easier for businesses to hire back laid-off employees, or to hire new workers.
We also intend to invest up to $4 billion to help up to 160,000 small and medium-sized businesses buy and adopt the new technologies they need to grow. We will encourage businesses to invest in themselves, by allowing for the immediate expensing of up to $1.5 million of eligible investments by Canadian-controlled private corporations, in each of the next three years.
Small businesses need access to financing in order to invest in people and innovation, and to have the space to operate and grow.
That is why Bill C-30 enhances the Canada Small Business Financing Program through amendments to the Canada Small Business Financing Act. This will mean broader eligibility and increased loan limits.
In 2021, job growth is green growth. This budget sets out an ambitious and realistic plan to help Canada get to net-zero emissions. And it puts in place the funding to achieve our 25 per cent land and marine conservation targets by 2025. At the same time, we will make targeted investments in transformational technologies, helping our businesses grow, and making us more productive and competitive around the world.
The hard and essential work of reconciliation continues. This budget commits to investing $18 billion over the next five years to narrow gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, to support safe, healthy communities, and to advance reconciliation. We are committing to investing $6 billion to improve infrastructure in Indigenous communities.
Bill C-30 earmarks $2.2 billion to flow through the federal Gas Tax Fund, renamed more appropriately the Canada Community-Building Fund, to communities across Canada. Cities and towns have faced steep revenue declines because of COVID. This funding will help them maintain and build the local infrastructure on which Canadians depend.
Collaboration with all levels of government across Canada has been, and will continue to be, the cornerstone of our Team Canada response to this pandemic.Â
Together, we will finish the fight against COVID and together we will come roaring back.
Bill C-30 is essential if we are to activate our government’s recovery plan as presented in Budget 2021. Our people and our businesses cannot do without the support measures in this bill. This bill takes unprecedented steps to stimulate future growth.
This plan is about people. It will make a measurable, positive, tangible difference in the lives of millions of Canadians.
It is about making concrete, targeted commitments to heal the wounds of COVID; to get us all back to work; and to put us on a long-term path toward growth, prosperity, and a clean, green future.
I urge all members to join me in supporting the speedy passage of this essential legislation.