Madam Speaker, it is a great honour to speak on behalf of the government on this bill in front of us, in particular to focus on the accomplishments that are contained within our budget implementation bill that we are debating and will be voting on soon.
I think my proudest moment remains looking up at the Assembly of First Nations chief as he heard the budget commitments to truth and reconciliation, and renewing and creating a new partnership with our first nations people, Métis, and Inuit. There is work to be done on that. The pressure that the opposition delivers to us to do more and to do it faster is welcomed pressure, and anything we can do to forward this is critical.
I remember in the summertime, as well, another very proud moment. I was stopped in the street by a single mom who almost broke into tears as she said “thank you”. The support through the child tax benefit had delivered her not only substantial resources with which to contend with some of the challenges in her life, but she said it gave her the first opportunity to think that she could actually save for her kid's post-secondary school.
The idea that this tax benefit not only provided immediate relief, but long-term and future relief and a vision for a better tomorrow, I think is reason enough for this budget to be passed immediately. Those benefits have already started to flow to people, and I am proud of that.
Another area is for single seniors. We know that women quite often are left alone without a full pension. We have moved on pension reform, but the move for the guaranteed income supplement to be boosted by 10% is lifting largely older women in this country into a better position financially so that they can take care of themselves. When their partners pass on and they are left alone, quite often their bills stay the same but their incomes change. Therefore, this is a step that we think is tremendously important, as is the CPP reform negotiated with the provinces, as is the EI reform, which is also under way and being delivered, especially to workers in Atlantic Canada and Alberta who are suffering as commodity prices turn in the wrong direction.
At the end of the day, this budget is about one thing and one thing only. It is about jobs. It is about delivering economic opportunity to every corner of this country to get people back into the workforce.
The phrase that we hear the Prime Minister use, “supports the middle class and those aspiring to join it”, is what this budget is all about. Nowhere is this delivered in a more pronounced way than on the issue of infrastructure, which is a program that I have a great deal of pride in. I look at this budget and see extraordinary accomplishments.
I left municipal government and came to Ottawa to get exactly this kind of budget put in place, exactly this kind of support for Canada's municipalities, large and small, northern and southern, rural and urban, the whole mix. The agreements that we have with every province now mean that money is flowing to places like Alberta.
Alberta had next to no infrastructure investment, because there had been no agreement between the province and the federal government for the last two years. Imagine if the two years of spending commitments announced but not delivered to municipalities were under way in Alberta. Imagine the unemployed tradespeople who would be working on infrastructure as the oil patch recovers. It could sustain that economy in a totally different way. However, instead what we had from the previous government were a lot of announcements. In the case of Prince Edward Island, the billboard was more expensive than the actual infrastructure project in Charlottetown. The Conservatives cut a lot of ribbons; they just did not cut any cheques, which was problematic for municipalities right across the country.
The most important investment, from my perspective, is in social infrastructure, which is primarily housing. The $2.3 billion delivered for new housing in this country over the last six to eight months has been transformational in so many communities. It is supporting the most vulnerable Canadians, but, again, it is also putting people back to work, building, repairing, and sustaining our public housing stock.
The biggest investments that have come to major cities are around transit. That is going to change the way that people move in our cities. It is going to allow goods and services to get to market faster, and allow people to get to work, to play, to school, and back home again, that much more effectively. It is going to change the way we generate greenhouse gases, by reducing them, by creating modal shifts as transit becomes more plentiful.
On green infrastructure and flood proofing our cities, a few hundred million dollars in Calgary five or six years ago would have prevented the $600 million in flood remediation. The investments we have to make around storms of the century are fundamental, and we need those agreements put in place and delivered to cities across this country as quickly as possible.
We have also stepped up for rural Canada, recognizing the needs and capacity limitations that smaller towns have in accessing government funds. We have increased the federal contribution. We have made it an easier process to get at money, and we are supporting the rural projects in the small communities that need special attention in order to become healthier and stronger places. As I said to our rural caucus chair in the Liberal Party, my job is to make their small towns bigger towns. This infrastructure money is aimed at doing exactly that.
Broadband access investment is required not just in the last mile but in the core needs of so many communities, to knit them into the modern economy, to ensure economic development opportunities and kids' ability, quite frankly, to connect to learning, to research, and to a wider world. All of these things are critical. This government has stepped up and put the dollars down, $2 billion in rural and $500 million in broadband, with more to come. Wait for next year's budget.
Universities were not in our platform and nobody criticized us for it, but universities are one of the most important economic drivers in many communities across this country. The investment in construction projects, science, and research have bolstered those institutions' capacities. Again, that is part of this budget, one more reason it should be supported.
The infrastructure spending is about building Canada, building strong communities and stronger families, and contributing to the GDP, the employment numbers, and the economic growth we need to succeed as a nation.
Finally, I want to talk about the infrastructure bank. The infrastructure bank is a revolutionary idea for this country in terms of what possibilities exist if it is done properly. I have heard the concerns raised about public-private partnerships or joint ventures, if it makes it more palatable for my friends on the left. I have understood the risks. Of course, there are risks. There is risk in any expenditure government makes. There are risks in 100% publicly financed projects right across this country. We can check local provinces' or cities' auditor general reports to see that even publicly funded projects with no private partners go off the rails sometimes. If we are going to avoid risk, we are going to avoid infrastructure, and that is too big a risk to avoid. We have to find new ways to do it.
All the hue and cry does not really tell the whole story. Only 8% of the $180 billion put down for the next decade is tied to this idea. Ninety-two per cent of the $180 billion is going to flow to traditional infrastructure programs, and not just traditional ones. There is a modification that is also critically important. For small communities, the federal input is 50%, leaving it to the province for 30:20 or 25:25 splits, which means that it is cheaper to access federal money for smaller communities. That is part of our infrastructure program.
On the infrastructure bank, smaller communities can bundle projects together and move together with expertise housed in Ottawa and financed in joint ventures with public and private partnerships. There is nothing bad or irregular about that. It happens all over the country.
We can also look at big Canadian projects that require financing. Instead of using municipal funds to fund big Canadian projects, like the Great Lakes seaway, which needs to be repaired as it was built with the same concrete as the Gardiner Expressway and is falling apart in the same timetable, we need major Canadian investments made and the infrastructure bank is just the vehicle to do that, to protect the traditional infrastructure money for municipalities, smaller communities, and large cities across the country.
We will also in-house the expertise. By in-housing the expertise, such as smaller communities that may have hockey rinks to build, which have a rate-supported funding system built in as everyone pays for ice time in this country, those sorts of projects are ideal for public-private partnerships, ideal for the kind of community development we want to do, great job creators right across this country. What will happen is that smaller communities that have those aspirations will not have to generate their own bureaucracy in order to manage joint ventures. They can lean into the infrastructure bank to both access the capital and structure the deals. This is part of what the infrastructure bank would accomplish on behalf of municipalities and communities right across the country.
I got criticized because I said opposition to this idea is stupid, but it does not mean that the people expressing that opposition are stupid. They just have not heard good ideas expressed about the benefits. Therefore, the criticism was not of the people, it was that the opposition idea, in and of itself, is good or bad. The reason this is such an important idea and the reason criticism is so short-sighted is that when I talked about flood protection, it is absolutely vital if we are going to preserve major metropolises and small towns. We cannot wait until the money accrues or wait to borrow, or wait to do that. We have to do it quickly. To not do it is irresponsible, to not do it is stupid.
Utilizing this methodology in order to put flood protection in place is smart. If we want to do it faster, and sometimes we have to do it faster to protect cities, sometimes the borrowing costs are different, but we can figure that out with an infrastructure bank in the way that smaller cities might not be able to on their own.
I will leave everyone with one last good idea. There is a guy called Mike Layton. Members might recognize the last name. There is another guy called Joe Cressy, someone I ran against. Both are New Democrats in Toronto and support public-private partnerships and toll roads in order to build infrastructure in Toronto. It is called the Don Valley Expressway and the Gardiner Expressway. The NDP is pushing this idea and I hope the party can follow the lead of some guy called Layton because—
