Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House to speak to this bill today and, in particular, to follow my colleague, the member for Humber River—Black Creek, who laid the groundwork for a new urban agenda in Ottawa, after all those years, before the lost 10 years of the last decade, where as a city councillor, support for cities disappeared.
The reason I chose to run federally, to leave city council and join Parliament, was for one reason, and one reason only. Beyond the need for a stronger urban agenda, we needed a new national housing program. This budget is the first time in 25 years, the first time in my political life, I have seen a federal government step back in with the strength, the commitment, and the diversity of programs for housing that our country so badly needs, as we watch thousands of people who night after night go homeless.
Compared with the last budget which had $2.7 billion over 10 years, this year's budget provides for $2.3 billion over two. This includes doubling the money flowing to provinces to a total of $500 million to build, subsidize, and repair public housing. It includes $200 million for senior housing. It includes, importantly, $90 million for people escaping family violence. Taken together, this is the most substantive and the most important investment in affordable and public housing we have seen in a generation. It is this budget that delivers it, and it is the most important reason to support the budget.
Cities have also been spoken to. We have moved away from the one-third funding formulas that defined infrastructure programming over the last 20 years. We have moved to a fair system, a flexible system, a system that gets money into the hands of city councils fast.
The fifty-fifty split defines a new relationship that we have established between the federal government and our municipalities, large and small, rural, highly urbanized, in the south, the north, and coast to coast to coast. This is the most important dynamic in our new relationship. We now recognize that cities are where the majority of Canadians live. If we are to improve the lives of the majority of Canadians, we have to invest heavily in the equity, the stability, and the capacity of cities, not only to provide shelter and services to Canadians, but also to generate economic growth.
One of the other critical steps that has been taken in this budget, which has not been present in the last 25 years, is we now recognize that aging infrastructure, not just new infrastructure, needs support. State of good repair and the recapitalizing of urban infrastructure is a fundamental part of the new infrastructure program. Cities have been crying for this for decades. Finally, we have a party and a government in Ottawa that is prepared to listen.
I sat by as a city councillor and watched the province of Prince Edward Island, in particular, see more money spent on billboards about infrastructure than on the actual infrastructure that was advertised on those billboards.
The previous government was very good at putting up the billboards, very good at cutting ribbons for projects that did not exist, but when it came time to cut the cheque, it was missing in action. While it put up the billboards, spending actually went down. That is unacceptable.
Major cities in this country, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Regina, Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax, St. John's, received zero dollars in the new building Canada fund over the last two years, while citizens in those cities cried out for support. If members talk to the mayors in those very cities, they will find out that is exactly what happened.
The other thing I am proud of is the fact that infrastructure programming goes beyond just transit and housing. It reaches into arts and the social infrastructure which builds stronger neighbourhoods—