The Budget
Date: 2023_04_18
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Ms. Julie Dabrusin: I am really happy to be able to stand today and talk about how this new budget we tabled is a building block on everything that we have been doing since 2015. It is in response to so many of the issues that I have been hearing about from people in my community. I would particularly like to focus on the work that we have been doing to support young families and people with low incomes, and our work on fighting climate change and building a strong, clean economy with jobs for the future. We have been doing all of this work, I should add, in a time of tremendous disruption since 2015. When we think about it, we had to renegotiate CUSMA. That was something so strong and important for our economy as a whole. After that, on another very important issue for an MP from Ontario to highlight, we made sure those automobiles and the parts here in our country were included as part of the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States. We can talk about other issues that have been in the background as we are working through these building blocks to support Canadians. There has been a pandemic. We do not like to talk about it that much because that was a very tough period of time for our country. Through it, our government was there to support Canadians and small businesses, and that was a lot of work that happened as we were trying to build and move these big building blocks forward. To say one nice piece after all of that, it is really nice to highlight the economy. The growth in our economy has been one of the highest in the G7 since the pandemic. We have record-high labour involvement of women in our economy. That is partly due to the child care agreements we struck and I am going to be talking a bit more about that. There is a final piece to highlight to show that we are doing hard work sometimes in a place where it is not always easy. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been disruptive to global supply chains and it has been a big change for our country as a whole and the world economy. Through all of those disruptions, we have been there to support Canadians. Let me focus first on young families. I have to say one of the biggest disappointments for me when Stephen Harper's government formed was that the first thing he did was to scrap child care agreements right across our country. We were there. I had young children at that time. It would have been so helpful to have had affordable child care, and yet that was scrapped. In its place was a system that sent the same payment to everyone regardless of what their income was. There were no new child care spots; there was no affordable child care and no quality child care being provided. That is why, for me, one of the proudest pieces of this budget, and all the budgets before working as building blocks in supporting young families, is that we put in place the child care agreement. In Ontario, in my home community of Toronto, people already have seen a 50% drop in child care fees. That is thousands of dollars kept in people's pockets. We are not only doing that, but we are going to $10-a-day day care. That is already available in some of the provinces and territories. That will make such a change on affordability for young families. Let us also talk about what some of the first things were that we did back in 2015 when we formed government. On the Canada child benefit, I mentioned the $100 cheques; the same amount was sent to everyone regardless of what one's income was. We changed that. Not only did we put in place child care agreements with $10-a-day child care across the country, but we also helped to create essentially guaranteed income for children by making sure that instead of sending the same amount to everyone, we provided support for children who had the greatest needs. It is a means-tested system. According to Statistics Canada, the child poverty rates are now less than half the levels they were in 2015. That is an amazing change. That is supporting our future generation, supporting children and I think it is something that really needs to be highlighted. The next step was dental benefits and supporting children under the age of 12 by giving them access to dental benefits. That was put in place last year. This budget goes one step further. We are making sure that dental benefits would extend to all Canadians. It would be in stages, but we would be at a point where we would have that. When we think about where a young family was before we formed government in 2015 and where we are now, with child care agreements, with the Canada child benefit and with the dental benefits, those are a lot of important changes, and that is something I see and hear about when I talk with people in our communities. I talk about young families a lot, but it was not just about young families; it has also been a priority of mine to make sure we are supporting people who have lower incomes and are in greater need right across the community. The dental benefit, as I mentioned, would expand to cover not just children, but the entire community, with eligibility rules on income and whether people have insurance, but that would be a big piece. We doubled the GST support during the pandemic, we did it again to address inflation, and now we have a grocery rebate. Once again, that would help people with affordability issues. We are there to continue to provide these supports. Let us talk about housing. Just last week in my community I was at a WoodGreen location at Bowden. We are creating, through the rapid housing initiative, 50 units to support seniors who are at risk of experiencing homelessness or who are experiencing homelessness right now. This is in addition to, right nearby in my community at Cedarvale, another 60 units with the same profile, all with supportive services to help these seniors age in place in their new homes. In fact, rapid housing has created over 1,000 new homes for people who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of experiencing homelessness in Toronto. The rapid housing initiative is bringing big changes to our communities. The objective is to create new units of permanent affordable housing for vulnerable people. We can create this housing and include wraparound services with the help of our partners from the non-profit sector. That is very important for our communities. That was about the rapid housing piece, but with a co-investment in my own community, we also saw affordable housing being built for seniors down at Gerrard and Leslie, and that created lower-rent affordable accommodations for people. I hear from people that they want to see these positive changes, and they are happening. I am actually seeing them being built in our community. Those are a few of the pieces on affordability. I know I only have a couple more minutes, but I do not want to leave without talking about environment and climate change, because that is such a central piece of what is raised by people in my community. This is also about creating jobs and a strong economy, and one thing I am very excited about is that just last week, the GHG inventory was submitted for the UN. We had that and it was made public. The numbers for 2021 for our GHGs show that we actually stayed below prepandemic levels in 2021. It is an amazing movement to be able to see, that we are actually showing a drop in our GHG emissions. The largest driver of that was moving off coal-fired electricity, so that is a really strong thing. Someone from Ontario would remember that we used to have 55 smog days a year. Now, there are no smog days, and that is because we moved off coal-fired electricity to clean electricity. We have one of the cleanest electrical grids in the world. What the budget would do through important clean electricity investment tax credits is help support the development a strong, clean electricity grid from coast to coast to coast in our country. That would help to attract investment from industry that is looking for places to build their businesses and their manufacturing where there is clean electricity. It would also mean cleaner air for Canadians, and it would mean we would be well supported as we make that transition. To the tax credit I mentioned, added in were investments on research, development, demonstration and deployment of new technologies. Like I said, we are talking about clean air, fighting and reducing our GHG emissions, and creating clean jobs for the future while attracting investment. It is a very exciting time for our economy. It is a very exciting time for Canada as we move forward.