Madam Speaker, we have put in place measures that have made a real difference in helping Canadians access home ownership over the last few years. However, we definitely know that we have more to do.
One of the commitments we made during the election was a $4-billion housing accelerator fund for municipalities. That $4 billion will help them move faster in building supply, issuing permits and developing low-income and middle-class housing, creating the supply that is so needed to take the pressure off families and communities. This is in addition to the other initiatives we have had, whether it is the Canada housing benefit or the rapid housing initiative that has worked with municipalities.
However, we will also do more. We will help families buy their first home sooner, with a more flexible and generous first-time home buyer incentive and a new rent-to-own program, and by reducing closing costs for first-time buyers. These are all concrete, tangible solutions that will help move things in the right direction for Canadians.
Even as the Conservative politicians these days are rending their shirts about the housing crisis, they offer no solutions. Indeed, the only concrete solution they had in their platform during the 2021 election was, get this, to give a tax break to wealthy landlords to help them sell their buildings. It really takes a federal Conservative to think we are somehow going to help people rent or buy homes they cannot afford by giving tax breaks to wealthy landlords. That simply does not work. What we have is a comprehensive plan that will indeed support Canadians in buying affordable housing and finding lower-priced places to stay. We are working on housing affordability.
Every step of the way our focus has been on supporting Canadians, whether it is by indexing the Canada child benefit to the cost of inflation or through a child care program that is not only going to help families with their costs, but also get more women into the workplace while giving kids the level playing field they need to succeed. We are making investments for the longer term of our future. We are standing up for the middle class, and will continue to address the labour shortages by boosting economic immigration levels and investing in skills training.
Obviously, Canadians are concerned about the economy, and they want to know that we are there to help them. We are going to be there to do that, and we are going to be there to invest. However, there are other issues that Canadians expect us to work on, and that is exactly what we are going to do.
Canadians want concrete action, and that is what we will do. They want us to take action on climate change, to innovate in new technologies and clean energy, and to create green jobs. They want us to build a more inclusive country and move faster on the path to reconciliation.
We recognize that climate change exists. Furthermore, we have long recognized what the Conservatives refuse to recognize, even today in 2021, which is that we cannot have a plan for the economy if we do not have a plan for the environment.
The Conservatives refuse to address climate change. They refuse to build an economic future for Canadians that will achieve net zero by 2050, not just for our country, but for our planet. We need to make the investments necessary to transform our economy in order to have lower carbon emissions, more innovation, more green jobs and, most importantly, green careers.
Unfortunately, these are the issues that the Conservatives continue to block, from putting a price on pollution to capping greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector until they reach net zero by 2050. This is how we will prepare our economy, our industries, our workers and our energy needs for the 21st century.
These are investments we are making, not only for the economy and jobs, but also to protect nature.
When we took office in 2015, barely 1% of our coastlines and oceans was being protected by the Harper government. In just a few years, we brought that up to 14%, and we are on track to reach 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030. The same goes for our lands, 30% of which will be protected by 2030.
We know that protecting the environment means more than just preserving its beauty and resources for future generations. It also means taking meaningful action to fight climate change now. That is our vision. It means understanding that by protecting nature, wetlands, and our rivers, lakes and oceans, we can ensure a better future with less climate change, while making unprecedented investments to transform our economy the right way.
As for reconciliation, we know that we need to build partnerships and that we need to find solutions to address climate change. In fact, we would not have been able to protect as much of our coastlines and oceans if not for the leadership of indigenous peoples and our partnerships with them. I am thinking specifically of the Inuit, who have shown a solid understanding of the fact that addressing climate change and spurring economic growth in their communities and across the country must go hand in hand.
I appreciate the Leader of the Opposition raising reconciliation in his address to Parliament a little earlier. One thing we can all do concretely in the House is work towards the full implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Unfortunately, however, the Conservative Party voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the last Parliament. I hope that the indication by the Leader of the Opposition that reconciliation is important to him means that the Conservatives are going to change their approach on UNDRIP, and actually realize that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is an important thing for Canada and the world to lead on. We will also continue to work with all parties in the House on these sorts of issues as we move forward.
I want to respond to a few of the points the Conservative leader made in his approach this morning. Unfortunately, he did not really demonstrate all that much in the way of leadership as much as he tried to score cheap political points.
We all know that the best thing for our economy is to put the pandemic behind us, yet the Conservative Party will not even confirm how many of its own MPs are vaccinated. That is simply not leading by example. We can hear from the members opposite that they hate it when people bring this up. At a time when we know the way through this pandemic is through vaccinations, they cannot be unequivocal on the need to get vaccinated and the need to lead by example. It is really disappointing. If the Conservatives had won in this past election, right now people would be travelling on planes and trains without the need to be fully vaccinated and would be putting Canadians at risk. That was a commitment the Conservatives had made to Canadians: that they would not have to be fully vaccinated to travel on a plane or a train.
That is simply not the kind of leadership Canadians expected. It is certainly not the kind of leadership they chose. It is also something that would be bad not just for the course of the pandemic in our country, but indeed for the economy. The Conservatives continue to demonstrate that they do not understand that the best thing to do to grow our economy is to finish this pandemic.
The members opposite have spoken a lot today about Canada's relationship with the United States as well. We will continue to stand up for Canadian interests. We will continue to stand up in the fight for the removal of softwood lumber tariffs, the fight to continue producing electric vehicles in Canada and the fight to continue making sure that our products, such as potatoes, continue to have access to the United States.
When the Conservative leader talks about the fact that we are not doing enough to go at the United States, it reminds me of what he said when we stood up for steelworkers and aluminum workers against the last American administration. His comment was that those retaliatory tariffs were dumb. That was the word he used. He said that it was a dumb thing to push back against the United States when they were imposing tariffs on steelworkers and aluminum workers and threatening massive waves of protectionism.
We did not listen to the Leader of the Opposition then. We went ahead in standing up strongly and firmly for Canadian interests, and that U.S. administration backed down. We protected our steelworkers and our aluminum workers, so members will understand that I am not going to take lessons from the leader of the official opposition on how to capitulate to the Americans. We will instead stand up strongly and firmly every step of the way.
Our government is focused on concrete solutions that deliver results. We have one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world. This reminds us, again, of the complaints and the partisan, personal attacks made by members of the official opposition, the Conservative Party, that when we were getting our vaccines they were not coming fast enough, we did not do well enough and we were not covering Canadians. Here we are, with one of the top vaccination rates in the entire world, and the party that spent all its time complaining that we were not doing enough to get vaccines into this country is now the only party in the House that did not bother to get fully vaccinated. That sort of playing political games and scoring cheap rhetorical points while not actually following up on the substance of what needs to happen to keep Canadians safe is, unfortunately, par for the course for the Conservative Party of Canada.
Despite all the talking down of the Canadian economy and our approach to supporting Canadians during the pandemic by the Conservatives, we have now recovered over 100% of the jobs we lost during the peak of the pandemic and have created new jobs on top of that. That is something that happened because we have been investing in Canadians and supporting small businesses across the country.
Over the past few months I could not go into a small business or a restaurant across the country without someone telling me, “Thank you for that wage benefit,” or “Thank you for the support that you were able to give us to get through it.” In return, I thanked them for hanging in there and staying open, and now for getting going again. I say yes, we will continue to support them in fighting the labour shortage that we are facing.
We had a year of closed borders to immigration when we were able to accept only a small number of people as immigrants. We now know that we have to get back to bringing people in to continue to grow our economy. We need to work on skills training. We need to give young people opportunities. We will continue to work not just to make sure people have jobs, but that jobs are filled. Growing the economy requires a government with a commitment to do what we have said from the very beginning: that every step of the way, we will have Canadians' backs.
We continue to be there for the economy and for small businesses. We continue to be there for families, with the Canada child benefit indexed to inflation and $10-a-day child care.
We will provide targeted support for the hardest-hit sectors, such as tourism. The leader of the official opposition talked about support for the tourism industry. I hope his party will work with us and we will get their support, because right now coming before the House we have Bill C-2, which will have targeted supports for the tourism industry. This is a sector that is very worried about what consequences the omicron variant might have for its industry and people's plans.
We have a piece of legislation we are putting forward that would make sure we are there to support those industries that are hardest hit. It would make sure we are there to support small businesses or businesses that are facing challenges, but would also make sure that we have lockdown supports if provinces have to move forward with targeted measures.
We will be there as a federal government, as we have been from the very beginning, to allow Canadians to make it through this health crisis knowing that their government has their backs and that we will bounce back and come roaring back stronger than ever. That is what is in Bill C-2 that we are moving forward. I certainly hope that the Conservatives and the other parties in the House realize that Canadians deserve a Parliament that is focused on them and is there to support them every step of the way.
We are committed to establishing the Canada mental health transfer to expand the delivery of high-quality free mental health services. We know that Canadians, like people around the world, have suffered because of the pandemic. The isolation, the pressures, the anxiety and the challenges they have faced have left their mark, and that is why investing historic amounts in mental health supports across the country will go a long way to help Canadians.
In the first days of this Parliament alone, we have introduced legislation to bring in 10 days of paid sick leave for workers in the federally regulated private sector and we will work with the provinces on echoing that across the country.
We want to protect health care workers from unacceptable intimidation. We are going to ban conversion therapy. However, there is always more to do.
Of course, we know that there is always more work to be done, but Canadians expect us to work collaboratively and respectfully in the House of Commons.
They fully understand that there are different points of view and that there will always be robust debate about how best to help and serve Canadians. I look forward to these discussions.
However, Canadians expect to see parliamentarians who are there for them, who think every day about how to serve them better and how to provide them with support and growth that they can benefit from. That is what they expect, and that is what this government is prepared to do.
I am reaching out to all parliamentarians with this Speech from the Throne, which focuses on concerns that we agree on. As I said, I look forward to the debates on how best to meet the expectations of Canadians.
The key question is whether we will be there for Canadians. I can assure the House that on the government side, the answer is yes.
