44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 30, 2024 10:00AM
- Apr/30/24 12:04:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to speak today about the 2024 budget, our plan to ensure fairness for every generation.
Our government firmly believes that everyone deserves to get ahead, including our young people. Unfortunately, we find that too many young Canadians are struggling to be as successful as their parents. It is clear that young people are not being rewarded for their hard work the way previous generations were and that their paycheque is simply not enough to keep up with the current increase in the cost of living.
Obviously, this means that our young people are finding it increasingly difficult to save enough to make their dreams a reality. Needless to say, this is very concerning to our government. That is why we are moving forward in budget 2024 with numerous measures to ensure that our young people have a fair chance at success and to give them the means to make their dreams come true. To ensure fairness, we must support one another at every stage in life and invest in one another. We feel that children deserve to get off to the best possible start in life.
However, today, nearly one in four children in Canada do not have enough to eat, which harms their health, their learning and their development. That is obviously a serious problem. That is why, in budget 2024, we are proposing a new national school food program. With an investment of $1 billion over five years, we aim to provide meals to 400,000 children every year, in addition to those served by existing school food programs. I am very happy that we are able to give our children a helping hand as they make their start in life.
It is precisely because we wish to offer children the best possible start in life that we have also created a Canada-wide early learning and child care system. Right now, all of Canada’s provinces and territories are already offering or on the verge of offering $10-a-day child care. Before the Canada-wide system was implemented, child care costs were on par with monthly rent or even mortgage payments, making it difficult to start and support a family. It forced many parents, mothers in particular, to make the impossible choice between pursuing a career and staying at home with the children. It was heartbreaking.
It is interesting to note that women’s participation in the workforce reached record levels after the system was implemented. However, even today, too few families have access to affordable child care. That is why we are building more spaces, as well as taking measures to ensure that even more will be built.
In the budget, our government proposes launching a new child care expansion loan program, which will provide $1 billion in low-cost loans and $60 million in non-repayable contributions. This program will allow public and not-for-profit child care providers to build new child care spaces and renovate their existing child care centres. We propose offering student loan forgiveness for rural and remote early childhood educators. This represents a $48-million investment over four years.
Again with the aim of making sure that our young people have a fair chance of succeeding, we also propose measures to train young Canadians and enable them to acquire a rewarding work experience. For example, we propose increasing, for another year, the Canada student grant for full-time students, raising it from $3,000 to $4,200 annually, as well as interest-free Canada student loans, which will increase from $210 to $300 per week.
Also, we propose to invest over $207.6 million in 2025-26 in the student work placement program to help create more work placement opportunities for students. This is an excellent way for post-secondary students to launch their career and get their first professional experience.
When we talk about rewarding hard work, we are also talking about housing, of course. We fully understand that housing is one of the key concerns facing young people today. This is particularly true for renters, who feel that the deck is stacked against them. That is why budget 2024 proposes measures to support and protect tenants. For example, we want to launch a new tenant protection fund worth $15 million to fund legal aid and tenants’ rights advocacy organizations.
We want tenants’ credit ratings to reflect on-time rent payments. Renters deserve to have their credit rating take into account the money they have spent on rent over the years, particularly when they submit a mortgage application to buy their first home.
This brings me to the dream of many young Canadians to purchase their first home. While this dream may seem out of reach today for too many young Canadians, we fully understand that the difficult struggle to pay for a down payment and obtaining an affordable mortgage is among the greatest pressures weighing on young Canadians right now. That is why we would like to enhance the Canadian mortgage charter to make home ownership easier.
The budget also proposes to increase the home buyers' plan withdrawal limit from $35,000 to $60,000 for those saving for a down payment on their first home. This increase will enable first-time home buyers to use the tax benefits of an RRSP to save up to $25,000 more for their down payment. This enhanced version of the plan will operate alongside the tax-free first home savings account, or FHSA, which allows Canadians to make contributions of up to $8,000 annually and save up to $40,000 for their first down payment. I am pleased to note that over 750,000 Canadians have opened this type of savings account since it was launched only a year ago. Together, these two plans will make it easier to save for a down payment and will improve access to home ownership.
We also want to allow 30-year mortgage amortizations for first-time buyers of new builds, starting on August 1, 2024. We will enhance the Canadian mortgage charter, including expectations for permanent mortgage relief measures, where appropriate, to further assist those struggling with their mortgages. Also, to further assist first-time homebuyers, budget 2024 proposes that people who have withdrawn or will withdraw an amount from their HBP between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2025, will be entitled to a three-year extended repayment grace period. These homebuyers will now have up to five years to begin the repayment process.
Our government has a plan to build more housing faster, make it more affordable, develop community housing sectors and make it easier to rent or buy a home.
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Madam Speaker, it is fantastic to be able to rise once again on behalf of the great people of the province of Saskatchewan, particularly the people in the southwest corner, whom I have the privilege of representing.
Right off the top, I want to just talk about the month of May, which is MS Awareness Month. One of the big asks of the MS community, in particular by MS Canada, is to have the government fund $15 million towards research on the disease, as well as the prevention and repair side of things, for people who suffer with MS.
Normally, I do not get up to ask the government to spend more money, because we know the Liberals are fantastic at spending boatloads of money and accomplishing nothing with it. However, in this particular case, we know that there is over $3.4 billion in costs to the government and in lost wages by people who suffer from MS. A $15-million investment would actually result in a tremendous amount of savings for the government for the taxpayer. It would also result in a higher quality of life for people who suffer from MS.
I just wanted to start off my budget speech by mentioning that. If the Liberals were truly listening to what Canadians want and would like to see, this is something that they could have included in this budget to make sure that they are actually working to better the lives of people in Canada. Canada has the highest rates of people who suffer from MS in the world, with my wife being one of those people as well.
I could not help but notice in the budget that there is a very small amount listed for agriculture. In fact, I believe that agriculture is first mentioned on page 131 of the budget, and it continues for the next page and a half.
One of the issues in the budget concerns the livestock tax deferral. I just want to talk about that briefly, because a lot of ranchers in my riding have been dealing with droughtlike conditions for the last number of years, which is nothing new. We live in southwest Saskatchewan, a part of the country where rain has never been a feature. It is not something that we regularly get, so it is not new for us to have droughtlike conditions.
There is a government program called the livestock tax deferral. What happens is that the local RM has to declare a state of disaster. Then the government takes a look at the rainfall and the forage percentage over the year to see if it has fallen below 50%, I believe. There is quite a process involved in implementing or triggering the livestock tax deferral. Clarification around that would go a long way to help producers to have more certainty in their industry. An issue too, though, is that the livestock tax deferral can only be used for one year. We know that, in Saskatchewan, it sometimes takes more than one year for one's pasture to regenerate. A lot of producers and organizations, such as the Canadian Cattle Association and the Saskatchewan cattle association, are saying that allowing the livestock tax deferral to be used over a period of three years would actually be a lot more beneficial. It would allow for better environmental protection and for pastures to be able to regenerate.
My riding name is Cypress Hills—Grasslands. The “grasslands” part of the name comes from the fact that we have some of the largest amounts of still untouched native prairie grass in my part of the country. It has not been broken up. It has been grazed for years. Buffalo used to be the keystone species there; they have since been reintroduced to the grasslands. Cattle have done a tremendous job of being the keystone species in the grasslands.
For ranchers who have native prairie grass on their ranch, in their rotation, it is of huge value to them to be able to preserve that grass. When ranchers sell their herd, they will get the one-year livestock tax deferral. If they are forced to rebuy and to spend more on cattle to get them back on the land, there will be a degradation of that land. Having a three-year window would actually allow for the pasture to properly regenerate. Even if there is only a small amount of rainfall, that three-year time window would allow for better regeneration of the pasture. The environment would be taken care of in a way that would allow producers to purchase cattle, regraze the land once again and keep that keystone species on the land as well.
That is something that would happen with the livestock tax deferral. If the government were truly listening to the producer groups it mentions in the budget, then that is something it would actually be talking about and looking to implement. After nine years, it definitely has not done that.
One of the other parts about it, which actually took up about a page of the page and a half in that, is the government's commitment to starting consultations, once again, on interoperability. It is really funny that this is in there. I had the privilege to sponsor Bill C-294, which is an act to amend the Copyright Act for interoperability. There are many fantastic short-line manufacturers in Saskatchewan, and quite frankly all across this country, that make great agricultural products. They also make products for other industries, but I am going to focus on the agricultural side of it.
It is funny that this section is included in the “Affordable Groceries” section of the budget. The government is finally realizing that when agriculture is treated with respect and producers are allowed to grow food in the most economical way, if we let them have a choice, they will be able to grow food in a more efficient manner, which, in the long run, is going to have a positive impact on the price of groceries and hopefully lead to groceries being more affordable.
However, Bill C-294 was tabled over two years ago and still has not received royal assent. It did pass this House about a year ago now, and nothing has been done with it so far. In the 2023 budget, the government said it was going to start consultations then. It still has not done it. In 2024, it is once again committing to starting consultations, in June. It has a specific time frame in which it wants to start consultations, but given its previous track record of not doing it, we will wait and see what actually happens.
What would be even better is if Bill C-294 were able to get royal assent. My bill passed the House of Commons unanimously. When it went through committee stage, we were able to accept a friendly government amendment to the bill, which put it a bit more in line with some of the government's priorities but with the law as well. This is important because we want as much certainty as we can possibly get, even though we had done some legal work in the buildup to the bill. We accepted that friendly amendment. This is a bill that is non-controversial, but it is something that would get things done. It would have a whole-of-economy effect and impact.
If the government wants to go through consultations, I am going to make it even simpler. What the government can do is go back and read the report that was done by the government branch that used to be called Western Economic Diversification, which is now PrairiesCan. The government can go back and read the report, which was released in 2020, on this very issue. What it will find in that report is the economic impact that agricultural manufacturing has across the entire country. This is not just a southern Saskatchewan issue; this is a whole-of-Canada issue.
The government can read that report. It can see the dollar value assigned to it. It can see how every single province benefits from it. It is a nation-building exercise. It does not even have to do the consultations; that has already been done. The government department already did the report. The government can read it. The consultations are done.
We are counting on the Senate passing and giving royal assent to Bill C-294 as quickly as possible.
If the government wants to impact the price of groceries, what it could also do is have this House pass Bill C-234 in its original form. It came back from the Senate with a huge amendment that gutted the original intent of the bill, which was to put an exemption in place for all on-farm buildings for all types of fuel, which is important when we consider greenhouses, dairy barns, chicken barns and pig barns. There is a huge level of cost that goes into running those facilities with the carbon tax, so passing Bill C-234 in its original form would have a huge impact on the Canadian economy. It would have a huge impact on the price of food.
Removing the carbon tax in its entirety would be beneficial as well, when we look at the transportation costs and the costs to the grocery stores. It is a huge detriment, so scrapping the carbon tax altogether would also be of huge benefit, and I do not see any of that in the budget either.
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