Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased and proud to stand here and support this budget.
I know everybody is listening to thousands of pieces of information about programs here and there, but the big thing about the budget is that it invests in two important things. It invests in the economy and creating jobs, and it invests in people, helping Canadians have more money in their pockets spend, to afford to do things they need, and to cope. For me, these two key issues are very important.
First and foremost is the economy. We need to invest in the economy now. We have had a stagnant economy and not very good job creation over the past 10 years. Everything has stayed steady because we have depended on one commodity only to float the economy and jobs, and we have seen what has happened. We have no control over global markets, and oil prices have gone down.
We are trying to diversify the economy, not only by investing in natural resources, of which we have a lot, but also by investing in the 21st century economy, creativity, and innovation. To do that, we have to reinvest in those areas that have been ignored for quite some time.
We want to kick start the economy now so it can start moving and then develop a long-term economy. Therefore, we are investing immediately in infrastructure.
As members well know, we are investing $11.9 billion in infrastructure, which is phase one. I want to point out that this budget is not the only and final budget this government will bring in. This is our phase one budget. When we invest in infrastructure, we are investing in green infrastructure, looking at waste water, encouraging electric vehicles, simple things like that which will move us forward.
We know that infrastructure brings jobs and gets people working immediately. Therefore, we are building roads and bridges. Road and bridges have to take our people, goods, and services across the country to ports and areas in which we can move them around the world. It is an important investment. For public transit alone, we are talking about $3.4 billion over three years.
Also, what most people do not understand is that from coast to coast to coast, ferries are important points of transportation. British Columbia will benefit from the 25% tariff being taken off of ferries. This will allow us to have bigger and better ferries, and to fix the ones we have right now. Again, when we can move our goods and services, that puts us into the competitive arena.
We are also investing in social infrastructure. We are investing in housing, which is the first part. Building new housing and renovating old housing is real work for real people, which will continue over the next five years and into the future. As the economy grows, we will see more building going on.
We are talking about the spectrum of housing. It is not only low-income and social housing in which rent is geared to income, but we are also looking at building home care for seniors. We are looking at how we can work with provinces and municipalities to build affordable housing. Because of that, the affordable housing budget of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has been doubled.
When the Liberals first brought in a national housing strategy back under Lester Pearson, CMHC was created. However, CMHC seemed to have lost its way in the last 10 years. Now we have now brought it back to do what it was supposed, which is to invest in affordable housing.
Many Canadians and their children cannot afford to buy houses, and may be living farther away. However, investing both in housing and transit closes that loop. In other words, we can get them to work and back home in a faster period of time.
We are also investing in the new 21st century economy. We are looking at investing in research and development, and science. We are looking at investing in areas such as commercializing our technology, which is a huge. We have universities that are second to none. They are coming up with important new discoveries, and the ability to commercialize some of that work is very important.
We developed the ebola vaccine here and we sold it, gave it away to a big company. We now have to buy it when we want it. That is not the kind of industry. We want to be a place where people can come here and talk about how we can develop good pharmaceuticals.
Over the years, we have shown excellence in environmental medical technology. This is where good, well-paying, solid, environmentally friendly green jobs will come from, and it will give Canada a name in the world as a niche market and a place when looking for this environmental technology.
I do not know if many people know this, but we happen to be best for sound and special effects in film, not just in North America but in the world. Everyone is beating a path to our door because of our new ability to deliver sound and special effects. This creates jobs. These jobs start at $63,000 a year. We are not churning out people in film school fast enough to fill those jobs. Canada can excel in communications technology, film, arts and culture and be the place the world looks to when it wants to find excellence.
We are looking at our ability to develop communications technologies, green technology and translational technologies. We are actually able to develop innovations in health care that we can commercialize to the rest of the world. Therefore, that translational research is very important. That is the kind of technology, the kind of new economy about which we are talking. That is where Canada can begin to excel.
With regard to aerospace, we have McDonnell-Detweiler, the Canadarm, the ability to bring in things like CASSIOPE that can download and upload enormous amounts of information and time. RADARSAT, which Google and all of the world now uses to tell us who is on what street and how to get from A to B, is Canadian, developed in my province of British Columbia with McDonnell-Detweiler. Let us go back and gear to be excellent in certain things. When we talk about investment, this is an example.
I am just reminded, Mr. Speaker, that I may be splitting my time with the member for Parkdale—High Park.
We are talking about that kind of investment in the economy, but the economy is not just an abstract thing. The economy is people. People are the ones who work, who produce, who make Canada competitive. Therefore, we are looking at how we invest in people so Canada can once again become a more productive nation and be competitive in a global economy. We have not been doing that very well.
We are reinvesting in skills so people can transition from economies that are not doing particularly well to the new economies. Retraining people is a huge investment, and it is an important one for people in the workforce.
Let us look at the young people coming into the workforce. We are now doubling the Canada student summer job program, with apprenticeship programs. By doubling it, every year 35,000 new students in university will be able to learn and train for these new jobs. This had been severely cut under the last government. We are bringing this back. We are telling students who come out of university that until they find a job that will pay them $25,000, they do not have to repay their loans.
We are bringing in grants for students to go to university and stay in university, up to a thousand new dollars a year.
We are investing in the fastest-growing population in our country, which is the aboriginal people. If we recall, there was something called the Kelowna accord under a past Liberal prime minister, Paul Martin. It would have invested $5 billion over five years into housing, education and health. It would be administered by aboriginal people for aboriginal people in partnership with the provincial and federal governments.
As soon as the last government came in, it was cancelled. That meant there were 10 years in which none of those programs were used, and aboriginal communities were 10 years behind in being able to participate fully in the economic, social and political life of our country. We have now brought it back. Ten years is almost a lost generation.
We had an emotional debate in the House about what was happening in Attawapiskat. This is not a new thing. It is because of despair and hopelessness. Communities need to participate fully in the economic life of their country and know there is hope that their next generation will do better, that they can find meaningful work in which they can find dignity. This is important. Working with indigenous people on a nation-to-nation basis is very important.
I could go into arts and culture, which creates 1.1 million jobs in this country and brings about $37 billion a year into our GDP.
These are the things we are investing in, people, the economy, jobs, and putting Canada back on the world stage.