Mr. Speaker, it is a great opportunity to get up and speak on the budget.
I am very pleased to split my time with my hon. friend from Kildonan—St. Paul, a hard-working MP who does tremendous work on ending human trafficking.
I would like to address my comments specifically to three major imperatives that this budget helps to address, not only from the standpoint of the Canadian economy but also New Brunswick and eastern Canada as well.
The first imperative is the opportunity in the resource sector, which is especially important for New Brunswick. However, I also want to stress the importance of dealing with some pending issues in the resource sector, specifically in the forestry industry. This is a major issue now impacting Quebec and southern Ontario, and fairly soon New Brunswick and the rest of eastern Canada as well.
The second imperative concerns the infrastructure for supporting our businesses, especially our small businesses and communities. I would like to talk a little about the imperatives from an infrastructure standpoint of assets, as well as the most important asset, which is developing our people to fill the jobs that we are going to need in the future.
The third imperative is reducing the challenges and costs to small business with respect to our regulatory burden.
First, on some of the major investments in the forestry sector, I was very pleased to see us continue with our investment in the forestry industry's transformation, which is very important. It leverages what we have done in the past with respect to the pulp and paper green transformation fund, a fund that has helped a lot of our pulp mills not only improve their processes but also decrease their environmental footprint.
It is great that the forestry industry has such innovation, especially in some cases in new Brunswick with the innovation there in some of our hardwood products. However, it is important to stress that we need this industry and we need the trees to help it, which is why I was so pleased to see an investment of $18 million to proactively combat the spruce budworm.
If we look back to the 1970s, about 30 years ago in Atlantic Canada and northern Maine, somewhere in the order of 50 million hectares was impacted by the spruce budworm, which has a cyclical pattern and is now coming back. It has come down through Quebec. It is near the New Brunswick border, and in some cases in northern New Brunswick at this point in time.
There is almost 7.2 million hectares of forest land in the province of New Brunswick and almost half of that, 3.1 million hectares, is susceptible to the spruce budworm. The challenge is that the spruce budworm could devastate the industry because the trees it infects become unusable. Therefore, we are looking at getting in at the front end and investing in a program to help disrupt the mating patterns of the spruce budworm, which will allow us to target specific spraying in the areas that will need it when the pest arrives.
It is interesting to look back at what it cost to have the last spraying program, not to ignore the fact that they used fenitrothion back then, a chemical not approved by Health Canada today. In the absence of a proactive strategy, it is estimated that we would probably go through eight to ten years of spraying, costing somewhere in the order of $400 million to $600 million. A spraying program that large is not something that provinces and governments could undertake, not to mention that a lot of the planes we used for the spraying program a number of years ago are no longer available. Therefore, this is an important aspect to make sure that we continue not only to help our businesses innovate but also to have the forest products there for them.
The third aspect is the opportunity in the resource sector. Given new Brunswick's financial situation, it will be pursuing some resource-based industries, and, as everyone is quite aware, the energy east pipeline.
This is a significant investment that is potentially coming to New Brunswick. When the announcement was made for the pipeline, which would carry 1.1 million barrels a day, not only was the oil important but also the initial investment that Irving was talking about, an extra $400 million to $500 million for a terminal, as well as the employment it would create. Those are great spinoffs for us. The $28 million the budget proposes for the NEB to review these projects is very important.
As far as creating the infrastructure is concerned, I am very pleased with the budget. We see tremendous opportunities in Canada. Here I would just give the example of persons with disabilities. There are about 800,000 people out there with disabilities who would love to work but probably have no place to work at this point in time. This is a huge untapped potential for the Canadian economy. Therefore, the $200 million in the budget for the labour market development agreements to develop that resource is tremendous for us.
In addition, the $1.5 billion Canada first research excellence fund and the accelerator and incubator funds are going to be important for small businesses to innovate and generate new ideas so that we can create employment. As many members from Atlantic Canada would know, especially in New Brunswick, about 90% of our businesses have less than 10 employees. There is a very entrepreneurial spirit. Therefore, that type of investment continues to be very important for us.
The other items I would like to talk about are broadband, and the long-term infrastructure plan, specifically the gas tax, which would be made more flexible to allow communities to invest for the long-term, allowing them to plan and count on those dollars.
The last piece I would like to talk about is reducing the burden for small and medium-size business. As I indicated, a number of these small businesses are very much alive and well in New Brunswick. Reducing red tape in the CRA and the 800,000 remittances that small businesses have to submit, and having an impact on almost 50,000 of these businesses via the budget, will be of real help. I say this because at the end of the day, many of them do not have people devoted to paperwork. They do not have the resources to devote to those types of things. It is very important that this save them money to actually invest in other parts of their business.
I would also like to talk about internal trade. Recently in a state of the province address, the Premier of New Brunswick commented on internal trade. He thought that our signing the CETA deal was actually easier than our dealing with internal trade within Canada. I think he is absolutely right, and so we need to continue to work co-operatively with the provinces on that.
My third point is about tax simplification. I was very pleased to see the minister talk in the budget about introducing legislation that would simplify the tax system from the standpoint of all of the unlegislated tax measures out there that governments have not implemented. It would be shameless self-promotion for me to say that some of that was based on Bill C-549, my private member's bill. I am very pleased that the minister put that in the budget for us to address.
Before I close, I would point out that we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to our volunteer community. There are a couple of things I would like to point out here that I think are very important. There is the tax credit for search and rescue people. Here I would note the tremendous group at the York Sunbury Ground Search and Rescue, which I know the member for Fredericton is very knowledgeable about. There is also Tobique Ground Search and Rescue in my riding. They have done a tremendous amount of work and a lot of volunteering to keep our communities going.
I would be remiss not to point out our recreational fisheries conservation partnership, which has allowed a lot of our conservation groups, including the Miramichi Salmon Association and other organizations, to undertake very important work on the river system in order to preserve and improve fish habitat.
The budget has created and dealt with three imperatives: the opportunities in New Brunswick, how to set out infrastructure in terms of people and assets to make those opportunities happen, and how to get out of the way so that small businesses can actually get their work done.
