Thank you very much, Chair.
It's a pleasure to appear before you and the committee members to discuss the budget implementation bill.
I'd like to talk first about the state of Canada's economy. Last year, Canada posted the strongest growth of any G7 nation. In the first quarter of this year, Canada had stronger than expected economic growth. Some 900,000 more Canadians are working today than when the pandemic began, and at just 5%, the unemployment rate has remained near its record low for five straight months. We have recovered 129% of the jobs lost during the pandemic, compared with only 115% in the United States.
Inflation is now down to 4.4% after peaking at 8.1% last June. The Bank of Canada projects that inflation will drop to 3% this year and just 2.5% by the end of the year. Our deficit is projected to be lower than it was last year, down to just 1.4% of GDP. Our deficit and our debt‑to‑GDP ratio are the lowest in the G7 and lower than those of other large AAA‑rated economies, such as Australia and the Netherlands.
This strong economic foundation underpinned the budget I delivered in March. Bill C‑47 implements many of the key measures outlined in our budget, which I think the committee members could get behind.
I'd like to talk about why it's so important that we work together to pass this legislation as quickly as possible. In our budget, we're cracking down on house flipping by fully taxing assignment sales, because homes should be for Canadians to live in, not a speculative financial asset class.
To protect Canadians, we're also cracking down on predatory lending by lowering the criminal rate of interest from 47% to 35%, and we're imposing a cap on the cost of total borrowing for payday loans of no more than $14 per $100 borrowed.
We're protecting air passengers' rights by making airlines more accountable for delays, cancellations and lost baggage, and ensuring that they compensate Canadians fairly for delays that are within the airlines' control.
We're modernizing the oversight of Canada's financial sector to ensure that our financial institutions act with integrity and that they're protected from threats of foreign interference.
To help make the cost of education more affordable for students across Canada, we're increasing withdrawal limits for RESPs from $5,000 to $8,000 for full-time students, and from $2,500 to $4,000 for part-time students.
To support the skilled tradespeople who are building our clean economy and working to double the number of new homes that Canada will build by 2032, we're doubling the tradespeople's tool deduction from $500 to $1,000, which will help them invest in the tools they need to do their important jobs.
We're expanding the Canada workers benefit to reach 4.2 million of our lowest and often most essential workers, and introducing quarterly payments that will put more of their hard-earned money back in their pockets sooner.
We're supporting the implementation of the new Canadian dental care plan, which will cover up to nine million Canadians by 2025. It will mean that in Canada you will no longer be able to tell how much money someone makes, or how much money their parents make, by their smile.
These are just some of the essential measures in the budget implementation act that are delivering on our plan to support Canadians from coast to coast to coast. I'm confident that members of this committee do support, and will support, these measures.
I'm looking forward to discussing it with all of you today.