Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned, my grandparents arrived here as immigrants. They arrived under contract as tobacco pickers. Once they finished their contract, they moved to the cities, eventually to Toronto. There were a great many opportunities. Toronto has grown significantly since those times.
In the budget we have provided $300 million for immigrant settlement to make sure that new immigrants, who will help build Canada's economy, will integrate at a faster pace than they have in the past.
Canada has become an urban country. More and more, people are moving to urban centres. It is for that reason the budget has paid particular attention to cities.
In the last election we talked about a new deal for cities. As I mentioned during my speech, we have kept that promise. We have provided for a GST rebate to cities of $7 billion over 10 years. In fact, we have gone further. In the budget we talked about $5 billion over the next five years to go toward cities. In the first year we have ramped it up from $400 million to $600 million and in the final year it will be $2 billion.
What is interesting is that the funding will continue past those five years so that after a 15 year period, we are talking about $25 billion. That will provide tremendous opportunities for our urban centres, for our cities, to make investments, to make sure that we have the public transportation infrastructure that is required and to make sure that those cities have healthy, liveable environments.
I am very proud of the commitments we have made in this budget.