Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1
Date: 2023_04_25
Chamber: HOUSE OF COMMONS
Mr. Adam van Koeverden: it is a privilege to rise this evening to talk about budget 2023 and all of the investments it is going to make in our country and in our communities right across Canada from coast to coast to coast. Since the tabling of budget 2023, I have had the opportunity to spend some time in my riding, as we all did, throughout the Easter break. However, it was more than just Easter break in my riding. There were quite a lot of activities, festivities and things to celebrate, including Sikh Heritage Month, Ramadan, Passover, Easter and many other things. It was good to be back in Milton to engage with industry leaders, families, students, academics and various advocates on budget 2023 and put into context what it means for Milton and Miltonians. Budget 2023 is designed to meet the challenges and opportunities of today by building an economy that works for all Canadians while supporting our communities towards a greener, healthier and more sustainable future. These are really ambitious objectives. We are meeting the moment, and we are going to achieve those objectives by providing targeted relief to help families, seniors, students and workers afford everyday essentials, with some fairly historic investments in health care. We are expanding our dental care rebate and focusing on families and the people who do not currently have access because they do not have any insurance. When I was an athlete competing for Canada, I did not have a dental care plan, so I paid out of pocket for dental. At the time, I thought I was a minority. I thought I might be one of only a few Canadians who do not have access to dental care. However, as it turns out, fully one-third of Canadians do not have access to dental care, and that is too many. It turns out that many seniors in my riding fall just over the income threshold for the provincial program that seeks to provide support and dental care for seniors. One has to have very low income in order to qualify for some of those programs. A lot of self-employed people, and we have plenty of those as we have a lot of entrepreneurs in Milton, do not have access to benefits, and some of their kids will not have access to dental. Friends of mine in Milton, Carly and her husband, have three jobs between the two of them. They work really hard serving our community, yet their three kids do not have dental care insurance, because their jobs do not cover it. However, with these new investments, all three of those kids will be able to visit the dentist, and it will not provide the family with any sort of financial burden, which is great. I would like to take a deeper dive on some local implications of budget 2023, and how it will invest in the clean economy and deliver some great jobs and great careers for now and for generations to come. First and foremost, I would like to focus on how budget 2023 makes life more affordable for Milton families. Too many people in our community and across the country are faced with real, tangible affordability challenges. They are struggling with the effects of higher grocery prices and rising housing costs. Budget 2023 is providing relief with a one-time grocery rebate, which is a $2.5-billion measure targeted on inflation, for the Canadians who need it most. It is a proven method to address these concerns, by using the GST rebate, which a lot of people are familiar with. Over 11 million low- and middle-income Canadians and families will receive the grocery rebate, and that means an extra $467 for families. Canadians without children will receive $234, and seniors will receive up to an additional $225. These measures are means-tested, which means they will be targeted to the families that need it most. I looked into this a little bit and did some research on the rising cost of groceries in Canada, and indeed, in 2023, groceries will cost families, on average, about the same amount. Many families are changing some of their eating habits. My partner, Emily, does not eat meat, and I eat less meat as a result of eating many meals with her and find that eating vegetarian a couple of times a week lowers our total cost. Adding all of those supports and programs that our government has introduced and improved over the last couple of years really puts this into context. I encourage Canadians who are interested in the budget or in any of these cost-savings measures to go to the website and check out how certain families will be implicated with all of these changes. I will post the website when I post this speech. I actually did a bit of research, taking an arbitrary four-person family in Milton with an income of $85,000. I found that, with reduced child care costs, the Canada child benefit, the Canada dental benefit, tax relief from an increased basic personal amount and the increased climate action incentive payments, this family will save over $11,000. I actually went a step lower on the income scale. I applied the same income that my family would have had when I was growing up, with two kids under six and a combined income of around $60,000, which is probably more than my mom made back in the day, but obviously times have changed a bit. With the grocery rebate, the increase in the Canada child benefit, the climate action incentive results and reduced child care costs, for a family that earns $60,000, that would result in a net savings of over $21,000. These are real, tangible impacts the budget would have on chequebooks. I was knocking on doors throughout January. Families in Milton were saying that times are tough, but they recognize the measures we have brought forward as a government, which are really helping their families. That was good to hear, and it makes me want to come back to work to keep working hard on these things. I have stood in this House before to talk about the $198.6-billion investments in health care that this budget formally introduces, but I would like to focus on one aspect that impacts many of our neighbours, and that is the health care human resource crisis. My mom is at an age now when she is looking to have a few procedures done. One of those is a cataract surgery. She also needed a new knee, and she has been waiting a long time. That knee was ready to get fixed during the pandemic. She went on a couple of lists, and that was delayed, obviously. Many of those challenges are worsened by the health care human resources crisis. Canada needs more doctors and nurses, and we need them now. We are addressing this need with a number of priorities outlined in bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories. Namely, we are streamlining foreign credential recognition, so that internationally trained medical professionals in Canada can get working in their fields of expertise more quickly. We are investing in wages for PSWs and other workers to encourage retention, and we are also investing in education for better recruitment to the sector. We want young people to know that if they are considering a job in health care, we are here to support that ambition every single step of the way. For students, the budget is really extraordinary. Over 750,000 post-secondary students rely on federal assistance each year to help them cover the cost of tuition, housing and everyday essentials. We want to make those expenditures more affordable, so budget 2023 seeks to do this by improving financial assistance for students with a 40% increase to Canada student grants. That is $4,200 for full-time students. We are also raising the total federal aid available to full-time students by over $1,000, up to $14,400 for 2023. In all of that, we would also eliminate all of the interest on Canada student loans and Canada apprenticeship loans forever. There will be no more interest on those loans. I think this is an incredible measure. The next generation of students will never know the additional burden of that financial hardship going into their working years. I was really glad to hear that. Two weeks ago, two of the awesome co-op students working in my constituency office in Milton organized a day when I went into their schools, Milton District High School and St. Francis Xavier, and I spoke to teachers and students about the impact this would have. The majority of those teachers have experienced student debt. I asked the students who was planning on going to university or college next year, and everybody put up their hand. I asked the teachers who had student loans when they were in school, and every teacher there put up their hand, obviously. I asked them how long it took to pay off that debt. It took a while. It took a couple of years; there is no question. It is important to note that this is not just for college and university; it is also for trades and apprenticeship graduates, so that those students would never have to experience that same financial burden. I would like to skip forward a bit to some of the measures in this budget that would support seniors, specifically. In budget 2023, we are strengthening pensions by providing $76 billion in support to over seven million seniors through critical programs like the guaranteed income supplement and old age security. Really importantly, these benefits would continue to be adjusted to keep up with inflation, and we would also expand dental care to seniors and redouble our efforts to support local seniors through programs like the New Horizons for Seniors. I recently announced over $100,000 in funding for seven local senior-serving community organizations, groups like Ontario Seniors' Forum and many others, which are hosting events in the library and at the arts centre to combat loneliness and isolation and serve our seniors. This budget would do so much for Milton. I had a chance to visit local small businesses to talk about the fact that we are going to work with credit card companies to reduce the costs of constantly swiping our phones or our cards on small purchases. I am guilty of buying at least one coffee a day with my telephone, and I know those costs get downloaded right to the small businesses. These are just some of the ways the lives of Miltonians would see positive change with the passing of this budget, and I am glad I had the opportunity to engage with some of my local members and stakeholders. Now, I would like to engage with some of my fellow members here in the House of Commons.