Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to respond to the budget and all that it means for Canada and Canadians.
As many in the House know, my main focus since becoming a member of Parliament has been to focus on our urban regions and the people who live and work in those communities. Therefore I will focus my remarks on the ways the budget will impact in our cities, about programs that will help build a solid economic foundation and which areas I believe we still need to address.
Budgets are about investments, about people, about choosing priorities and about balancing the needs of one over another. The choices we make will determine how well and how wisely we build a country for the future. The budget and the work we do in the House is also about nation building, about working together to secure our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. It is also about the values and principles that we share as a nation and about Canada's place in the world. This budget very much reflects those priorities.
I will begin by thanking the finance minister for his reference to the work of the task force in his speech last week. His acknowledgement of our work is an indication that the government is listening to Canadians, and I appreciate his acknowledgment of the Prime Minister's caucus task force on urban issues which my colleagues and I worked on together.
Out of the 52 recommendations in the interim report of the task force, 30 are incorporated, in one way or another, into the budget.
I want to mention how proud my colleagues and I in the task force are of the work that we have accomplished but we recognize that there is still much to do. The reports have been very well received across the country by mayors, provincial officials, urban experts and national organizations. In fact, our reports have become a reference tool for many government and non-government people working in this field.
Many Canadians question the role of members of Parliament but let me state that excellent work is being done, and has been done, by members from all regions. Members of Parliament have a great opportunity to make a difference and the work of the task force proves that is the case.
The government has a clear continued commitment to the urban agenda but perhaps one of the questions we should ask ourselves is what the role is of the federal government in cities. After all, we do have a significant presence in terms of programs, services and as an employer.
A rudimentary survey by the task force showed $55 billion going into 10 major urban regions in each year alone. This was a very basic scan.
We are the national government and we have responsibilities to work with all orders of government to meet the needs of our citizens in areas that are within our jurisdiction. It is in everyone's best interest to ensure services and programs meet the needs of our growing population.
The federal government is an active partner with governments and the private and voluntary sectors to ensure that Canadians have access to health care, post-secondary education, employment, transportation, safe streets, skills and training, pensions and income support for families.
Eighty per cent of Canada's population lives in urban regions. Do we not have a responsibility to those communities? I would say yes, without a doubt.
As the main engines of the economy, it is vital for our cities to be successful and it is essential that the national government create the economic environment for that to happen, along with the provinces and the cities. When the cities do well, the whole of Canada benefits.
Let me remind members that only the provinces have the authority to give the cities what they really need, and that is, a wider source of tax revenue, more autonomy and a greater share of the wealth that is generated by them. Yet the Ontario government continually denies Toronto's request for a simple issue like a hotel room tax or allowing the cities to impose any other kind of support that could ease the strain on the property tax base.
As it was stated in Toronto Dominion's report, it is time to unshackle our cities.
In my own city of Toronto, the pressures caused by downloading, amalgamation, rapid growth in population and an aging infrastructure bring social and economic problems and stresses on budgets that affect the quality of life and the ability to be competitive. In other cities too across Canada there are similar concerns.
By recognizing these pressures, the federal government continues to work in collaboration with the provinces to relieve the demands on housing, transit, infrastructure, health care and so on.
The budget covers a range of issues that have an impact on cities: health care, infrastructure, transit/transportation, housing, immigration, the urban aboriginal community, research and development, culture and the arts and support for poor families. As well, new money for child care will directly benefit the people living in our cities.
This budget commits a total of almost $10 billion to programs that will benefit cities and have a direct impact on Canadians living in our cities.
Almost two-thirds of the budget is going into renewing Canada's health care system, one of the finest in the world and one that is extremely important to all of us as Canadians. New money for primary health care, home care, drug coverage and the new program for compassionate and palliative care to help people who have dying mothers, fathers or other family members, will all benefit cities where the pressures of the health care system are felt the most. This is a significant investment.
A sustainable infrastructure program was a key recommendation in our report. The budget announced an additional $3 billion to the strategic infrastructure program, bringing the commitment to this specific fund alone to $5.25 billion that is targeted, not for every city in Canada but specifically for our major cities. We are talking probably a maximum of 10 cities that would be eligible for that fund.
An additional billion dollars was set aside for infrastructure projects for our smaller municipalities. This investment is the basis for a 10 year permanent infrastructure program that will be continually added to in future budgets.
It is worth repeating that the government has been into infrastructure since 1993. Is this enough? Not for some cities with major infrastructure problems and with aging infrastructure in need of repair. However for the first time there is a real commitment to a long term agenda for infrastructure that the mayors and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities have been requesting for years.
The message we heard as a task force from municipal governments was that they wanted to be able to do long term planning. Now they have a program and they can commence their planning.
I would have liked to have seen more money in the budget go into the area of infrastructure but I recognize that budgets are all about balancing priorities between people and the needs of communities.
Since 2000 the total infrastructure money committed by the federal government is $8.25 billion. With leverage from the private sector and the province, we can triple that amount. That is the intent of infrastructure programs.
The task force recommended a national transit-transportation program as well. I was pleased to hear the Minister of Transport yesterday announce a vision for the future of Canada's transportation system. I see this as a framework for a future national program with dedicated funding for transit and transportation.
We can and must do more to help our urban regions as we are the only G-7 country without a national transportation program.
The task force also recommended a national affordable housing program. An additional $320 million was added to the affordable housing agreement, which brings our commitment to a billion dollars on affordable housing.
Of course the government went ahead and continued to support the supporting communities partnership initiative and the residential rehabilitation assistance program. It brings that up to about $1.2 billion to assist the cities to deal with the homelessness issue.
The RRAP program, which is the residential rehabilitation assistance program, also had additional money put in which helps seniors and the disabled.
However more must be done. We need to look at tax changes in order to create the environment for affordable housing.
The increased funding for the urban aboriginal programs is a significant and a welcome investment.
On the environment, environmental issues which threaten the quality of life are a major concern for cities. Three billion dollars was allocated in the budget to promote sustainable development, which is transit-transportation; to create a healthier environment; to clean up federal contaminated sites; and to work at improving air quality. Two billion dollars of that will go into Sustainable Development Technology Canada, including sustainable transportation, and to look at alternative fuels, such as ethanol, wind power and fuel cells, which our rural caucus continually reminds us how important that is. There were various recommendations in this report that clearly will help us.
There is much more to do when we are building a nation and much more has to happen. The cities' agenda is a work in progress and the operative words are “in progress”. I believe the budget goes a long way to meeting those issues. However much more needs to be done and we need to be doing that together in co-operation with the provinces and with the cities.
Alone we can do little but together we can do a lot.