Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the constituents of Fleetwood—Port Kells to participate in today's debate on budget 2010.
Our budget is a responsible plan to solidify Canada's economic recovery, while paving the way to a more prosperous future. This budget builds on Canada's economic recovery with actions to create jobs and stimulate growth, to sustain our country's economic advantages and chart the way forward to budget balance.
Our government has held hundreds of consultations with Canadian workers and businesses across the country. Individual MPs like myself have talked with constituents to discover where people want the country to go. The result is the budget we have before us today, a budget which is a response to the concerns of everyday Canadians about jobs and the economy, with prudent measures to ensure our long-term prosperity.
The budget is about supporting families and communities and helping those who helped build Canada. The budget invests in jobs and growth, helps youth gain lasting employment, modernizes infrastructure and works to ensure our position as an energy superpower with money for clean energy projects and green jobs.
It is a budget for both today and tomorrow that deserves the full support of the House. The budget implements year two of Canada's economic action plan. Canadians across the country can attest that Canada's economic action plan is working and helping to keep Canadians working. Already the plan has created or maintained an estimated 130,000 jobs and is expected to create or maintain 220,000 jobs by the end of 2010. That does not even include the 225,000 jobs that were saved through our expanded work-sharing program.
We are in the middle of the largest federal investment in infrastructure in over 60 years. We are putting Canadians to work in over 16,000 projects across Canada to build better roads, bridges, public transit, colleges, universities and much more.
The economic action plan is having a direct and lasting impact on the lives of my constituents of Fleetwood—Port Kells by providing federal money to projects and programs. In the last year, there has been $7.3 million for the Fraser River flood protection, $30 million for a new Surrey City Centre library, $1 million for Tynehead Regional Park, over $120,000 for the Surrey Art Gallery, over $800,000 for youth employment, $3.4 million for skills development, $1.7 million for employment services, $2.9 million to help people find work, $345,000 for the Cloverdale Rodeo, over $400,000 for youth crime prevention and $3.5 million for local recreation facilities.
That is money being spent right in Surrey and it does not even include the millions more our government is spending on the Pacific gateway to improve our roads, highways, bridges and ports, or the thousands more pumped into the local economy through programs like the home renovation tax credit.
As we roll out the second part of Canada's economic action plan, budget 2010 will invest $3.2 billion in personal income tax relief. This includes allowing Canadians to earn more income before paying federal income tax and before being subject to higher tax rates. It includes the enhanced working income tax benefit to strengthen work incentives for low income Canadians, higher child benefits for parents and lower taxes for low and middle income seniors.
Budget 2010 will invest over $4 billion in actions to create and protect jobs. This includes additional EI benefits and more training opportunities to help unemployed Canadians.
Budget 2010 will invest $7.7 billion in infrastructure stimulus to create jobs. This will modernize infrastructure, support home ownership and improve social housing across Canada.
Budget 2010 will invest $1.9 billion to create the economy of tomorrow. This investment will help develop and attract talented people, strengthen our capacity for world-leading research, improve commercialization, accelerate private sector investment, enhance the ability of Canadian firms to participate in global markets and create a more competitive business environment.
Finally, budget 2010 will invest $2.2 billion to support industries and communities for affected sectors, including forestry, agriculture, small business, tourism, shipbuilding and culture. This will provide job opportunities in all parts of Canada that have been hit hard by the economic downturn.
In addition to delivering year two of Canada's economic action plan, budget 2010 will also invest in a limited number of new targeted initiatives to build jobs and growth for the economy of tomorrow, strengthen Canadian innovation and make Canada a destination of choice for new business investment.
For example, British Columbia will benefit from the $222 million to be provided over the next five years to strengthen the world-leading research taking place at TRIUMF, Canada's premier national laboratory located at UBC. Communities in B.C. will also benefit from the purchase of a new hovercraft for the Canadian Coast Guard near Vancouver.
Federal transfers support for provinces and territories is at an all time high and it will continue to grow under our government.
For British Columbia, this support will continue and it totals to almost $6.3 billion for the upcoming year. It provides resources for the essential public services, including health care, post-secondary education and other key components of Canada's social safety net. It includes about $3.6 billion through the Canada health transfer, an increase of $231 million from last year, and $1.5 billion through the Canada social transfer.
British Columbia will also benefit from continued targeted support in 2010-11, including $54 million as its share of the community development trust and the police officers recruitment fund and $67 million for labour market training.
Budget 2010 also includes a three point plan to return to balanced budgets once the economy has recovered. First, there is an exit strategy to end temporary stimulus spending measures by the end of next March. Second, we will restrain spending, $17.6 billion targeted saving over five years. Third, there will be a comprehensive review of government administration and overhead costs.
Our government assures that we will not raise taxes and we will not cut major transfers to persons or other levels of government. Under our government, pensions are safe and we will not repeat the mistake of the previous Liberal government that devastated health care and social services by slashing federal transfers to the provinces.
As a result of our three point plan, the deficit will be cut nearly in half in two years and by two-thirds in three years. Budget 2010 will save taxpayers more than $17 billion by freezing the salaries of ministers, MPs and Senators, eliminating 245 Governor in Council positions, freezing departmental operating budgets, reviewing government operations, freezing foreign aid, slowing growth of national defence spending and closing tax loopholes.
With these measures budget 2010 charts a course to bring Canada's finances back to balance over the medium term and well before any other G7 country.
Our jobs and growth budget continues a plan that is working. It will help solidify Canada's economic recovery and sustain our economic advantages now and for the future.
Unlike the Liberals, our government will not raise taxes. Unlike the Liberals, our government will not cut spending on health care, education or support for seniors. Together we will create a stronger Canada and a stronger economy now and for the future.