Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Toronto—Danforth.
I am delighted to rise in the House this morning to speak to the budget tabled by our government a few weeks ago. While we were in our respective ridings recently, I had the opportunity to present our budget to some of the chambers of commerce in my region. I met with just over 200 people to share the budget's main points with them.
To answer my colleague across the aisle, I would like to talk about what the budget will do for our regions and our communities. This budget includes some very positive things for our rural communities and regions like mine, such as eastern Quebec and the Gaspé. That is what I want to talk about here in the House this morning.
First I would like to paint a picture of my region's socio-economic situation. My riding covers an area of about 16,000 square kilometres and has 57 municipalities and as many elected representatives. As for population density, one of the counties has about 6.5 people per square kilometre and therefore has a vast expanse of land. The population is relatively evenly distributed in terms of age. There are about 2,500 people aged zero to 14, 2,000 people aged 15 to 24, and 4,000 aged 25 to 44.
My region has a negative migration flow, which means that it is slowly losing its population, and this saddens me. The same is true for three of the four municipalities in my riding. In addition, the population is aging, and the employment rate is 69%.
In my riding, per capita disposable income is $23,000. It is one of the lowest average disposable incomes in Canada, if not the lowest. It is a particularly tough economic situation. When the budget was brought down, I was very proud of the tangible measures that the Minister of Finance and our government put in place to help those in great need who are having a hard time making ends meet. Solid commitments were presented and announced in the budget to address this. We also talked about lowering taxes for the middle class. It is quite an achievement.
We also committed to presenting tangible measures for families, young people, and seniors. I would like to quickly mention those. The first pillar of budget 2016 is the Canada child benefit. Many families in our region need this benefit. It will allow families with children under six to receive up to $6,400 per child. Families with children between six and 17 will receive up to $5,400 per child. That is a lot of money for families in our regions who need extra money to make ends meet. We clearly indicated in the budget that these benefits would not be taxable, which is very important.
As far as young people and students are concerned, we announced a 50% increase in student grants, meaning an extra $1,000 for students from low-income families. We are also very proud of this measure.
We also announced a student loan repayment exemption for students who earn less than $25,000 when they enter the labour market. In other words, students will not have to repay their student loan until they are earning at least $25,000 a year. That is an increase of $5,000. It is very important for them to have a small financial cushion before they have to start paying off their student debt.
We announced the creation of many student jobs under the Canada summer jobs program. We committed to increasing the number of jobs in the regions. We estimate that this could represent 350 more jobs for students in my riding. We are very proud of that.
Obviously, we did not forget about our seniors. These individuals are proud, active members of our community who do volunteer work. We announced a 10% increase in the guaranteed income supplement for single seniors. Our government's excellent approach in this regard seeks to recognize the financial difficulty that some members of our population are experiencing. These are practical measures that will affect our communities.
Other measures have also been put in place, including improvements to the employment insurance program. That is important in my riding. Unfortunately, people sometimes may need to rely on employment insurance, whether it be on a temporary or a periodic basis. Significant improvements have been made to the program, including the reduction of the two-week waiting period to one week and a decrease in the number of hours required to be eligible for EI benefits. New entrants and re-entrants to the labour market had to accumulate up to 910 hours of employment to be eligible for EI benefits. We recognized that that was a problem and now, in our region, they will have to accumulate only 420 hours to qualify. We are very proud of that measure.
We are eliminating the requirements that forced claimants to accept jobs at lower rates of pay and with longer commuting times. That was a very obvious problem in my riding. These sorts of measures, which were brought in by the Conservatives in 2012, have been eliminated. That is a promise that we made during the election campaign, and I am proud to see it in the budget. The people in my riding are very happy that these types of changes have been made.
We have also undertaken to extend the working while on claim pilot project to August 2018. That is very important to us. We have also decided to continue and increase investments in skills training, and we have increased that budget to $675 million. Obviously, I am also very proud of the fact that we are reinstating the 15% tax credit for labour-sponsored funds. That is another important element of our platform that is being implemented with this budget.
There has been a lot of talk about infrastructure. We believe these investments are important because they can benefit our communities. For example, we have allocated $1.5 billion over two years for affordable housing. It is very important to be able to access such housing in our communities. Another example is the $342-million investment over two years for cultural and recreational infrastructure. It is important for our communities to have cultural and recreational infrastructure.
We will be investing $2 billion over four years to immediately improve water treatment and distribution infrastructure. We are even committing to paying 50% of eligible costs.
Different measures for infrastructure are very important to us. Once again, we are very proud and we believe that investments in Quebec could total up to or over $700 million.
There were some big announcements in the budget for arts and culture, such as increased funding for CBC/Radio-Canada. There was also more funding for the Canada Council for the Arts, Telefilm Canada, the National Film Board of Canada, and Showcasing Canada's Cultural Industries to the World. Cultural organizations in our region welcomed these reinvestments in arts and culture. We are very proud that these measures are in the budget.
We have heard a lot about SMEs. We obviously want to support them with technology and help them improve and modernize their organizations and businesses. These SMEs also want contracts, to help keep their businesses going. By investing in infrastructure, we think we will be in a position to create jobs that will generate economic spinoffs in our regions and encourage people there to spend and invest. For example, they may buy a pair of skis or a bike this summer, which will have a direct impact on our regional businesses.
We also promised to invest $197 million over five years in Fisheries and Oceans Canada to increase monitoring and research activities. That is very important to us. The Maurice Lamontagne Institute is in my riding and is one of the top francophone research centres in the world. We are very proud of this institute, and we obviously hope that this measure will benefit the Maurice Lamontagne Institute.
In conclusion, I am very proud of the budget that was presented. This budget will help my community and our municipalities develop economically and create jobs. Once again, this is a step forward for us.