Thank you, Madam Chair.
I know there are a lot of details here. I want to stress the importance of our actually going through all of the important context when we're making decisions that are going to impact all Canadians. Sometimes it takes a while to get through all of the details; however, it is really important that we do flesh everything out here, because there's a lot of context that needs to be gone over.
A lot of us, of course, are waiting for this budget that's coming out on November 4. Something important to note here is that this is a budget that has a new capital investment budgeting framework, and that framework is going to distinguish between current operating expenditures and capital investments.
This is a really important thing to pick apart here. That's going to help the government prioritize investments that are going to deliver those long-term benefits for Canada. The operating expenditures are going to be balanced by 2028-29. The 2025 budget is certainly going to rise to the occasion here. It's going to be a budget whereby we're going to build, here, the strongest economy in the G7. It's going to do something very concrete to make life more affordable.
We know the cost of living is still a constant priority for Canadians. I certainly heard a lot of that throughout my campaign. In fact, that was the first thing that came to mind for people I talked to. I asked, “What are you most concerned about?” Most people really just wanted to bring those prices down, whether for their groceries or for rent, and so on. We know here with the government that is really one of the biggest challenges to Canadians.
Part of affordability is the cost of housing. We're facing a housing crisis, particularly for younger generations being born into a housing market in which they cannot afford to even think about the concept of buying. That's something that is really important for us to address as the government.
As part of that, we're implementing an approach to increase the supply of housing for Canada. The Prime Minister recently launched a new federal agency responsible for building affordable housing on a large scale, called Build Canada Homes. That's going to combat homelessness by building supervised and transitional housing in collaboration with provinces, territories, municipalities and indigenous communities. This is a really big step towards making housing more accessible for a lot of Canadians.
In Bill C-4, we're talking about affordability, and this is just one example of making things more affordable for Canadians. It's going to build community-based, highly affordable housing for low-income households. It's also going to partner with private developers to build affordable housing for the country's middle class, which oftentimes includes some of the folks who are struggling most.
To do that and help Canadians buy those homes, the proposed elimination of the GST for first-time homebuyers is for homes valued at $1 million or less. It also reduces the GST for first-time homebuyers of new homes valued between $1 million and $1.5 million. As Canadians demanded, we're putting money back in their pockets by cutting taxes.
However, bringing it back to the topic at hand here, this is cutting taxes in a responsible way. It's cutting taxes in a way that will help Canadians most and is not going to have lots of other unfortunate impacts that the Conservative Party is proposing for cutting taxes. We want to be fiscally responsible here and consider the best interests of Canadians, not only today but going forward well into the future, and with investment into the long term in mind.
Since July 1, all Canadians have benefited from a tax cut that will save a dual-income family up to $840 per year starting in 2026. That may sound small to some, but for those who are living paycheque to paycheque and really struggling, $840 can mean the ability to put food on the table. That is something really important coming to all Canadians—to 22 million Canadians, in fact.
That's a lot of people who will benefit, while keeping things fiscally responsible here in the government. They can now keep more of their paycheques and can use that according to their priorities.
With the trade tensions with the United States, we know the importance of continuing to support Canadians affected by this dispute. Since the beginning of this, we've put in a robust Canadian system of economic support to help businesses and workers directly affected by the U.S. tariffs. We have heard consistently of all the industries that are really struggling right now: the auto industry, the steel industry, the aluminum industry.... The softwood lumber industry is particularly being hit hard in my home province of B.C. These are all industries that sometimes need supports from the government. The government needs to have some extra funding to deliver to these industries; otherwise, we have companies shutting down, moving to the United States.
This is a really big problem, and the government needs to be fiscally able to support these companies. When things look like they're about to go under, that's when the government needs to step in and assist. Fortunately, the government has been able to assist here. We're coming back to the concept of unfunded tax cuts, really, which is what this measure is proposing. The Conservative Party claimed that this was responsible spending, but frankly, it's not.
To the witnesses, I'm wondering perhaps if you might be able to speak of any other cases of countries that passed large, unfunded tax cuts, especially when the full implications aren't able to be weighed out. Could you maybe provide any examples of when this has happened in the past and what the outcome of that might have been?