Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise once again on behalf of the people of Gatineau. They did me the supreme honour of electing me to represent them in this House, and I am grateful to them every day for this honour and the weighty responsibility that comes with it. I am proud to rise today to support this bill and our government's budget plan in general.
Today is our first day back in the House since tragedy struck the community of Humboldt, Saskatchewan. Like Humboldt, Gatineau is a hockey town, a town where parents work hard every day to help their kids take part in organized sports like hockey, a town where parents put their kids on buses and send them off on long overnight trips to all kinds of destinations in the United States, Ontario, the Maritimes, and other parts of Quebec. On behalf of the people of Gatineau, I want to express our deepest condolences and dismay at what has happened. Our thoughts are with the parents and communities affected by this horrific tragedy.
In Gatineau, we introduced a plan based on our national election promises that focuses on the middle class and investing in our communities. That includes public transit, so this year I was very pleased to participate in announcing the Rapibus extension as well as other major construction projects in Gatineau, such as the Parks Canada artifact storage facility, the Library and Archives Canada Gatineau 2 document preservation facility, and the revitalization of Terrasses de la Chaudière. We are investing heavily in federal public assets in Gatineau.
I can assure my constituents that I will continue to fight for more investment in public transit. One of the files I am working on is a sixth interprovincial link between Quebec and Ontario, which people have been debating for the past 100 years. I made it my mission to champion that link, and I will continue to advocate and fight for it until the day the announcement is made.
More generally speaking, our budget plan is working. It is working for parents and for our most vulnerable seniors, whose guaranteed income supplement has gone up by 10%. It is working for infrastructure in Gatineau and across the country. It is working for our small businesses.
I have been very pleased to meet business people in my riding on several occasions. They are very satisfied and very happy that we have delivered on our commitment and are lowering the small business tax rate to 9% beginning next year. Our plan is also working when it comes to unemployment, which is under 6% at just 5.9%. That is the lowest unemployment rate ever seen for as long as Canada has been recording these statistics. Since the second quarter of 2016, GDP growth has been 3.7%, the best rate of any major industrialized country. Wage growth in Canada is tracking at approximately 3%. Once again, that rate is higher than anywhere else in the world. Year after year, the projected debt-to-GDP ratio is going down. Our plan is clearly working. It is improving Canadians' quality of life and prosperity and helping us keep our campaign commitments and the solemn promise we made to hard-working Canadians.
I want to highlight two initiatives in this budget. People sometimes become cynical at election time. People make choices based on personalities and specific commitments, but also based on philosophies. Here are two initiatives that Canadians would never have seen under a Conservative government, because these are not the kinds of things the Conservatives would ever choose. These two initiatives will benefit those who need it the most in our society, specifically people working hard to join the middle class. They are people working hard to become more prosperous and to be more productive citizens for themselves, for their children, and for future generations. Of course I am talking about the Canada workers benefit and the Canada child benefit.
What is the Canada workers benefit? We know that there are people who are receiving social assistance or other benefits. Perhaps they have a family member who is ill. Perhaps they work part time. Perhaps they are caring for their children. Regardless of their circumstances, they find it difficult to make the decision to get off social assistance and enter the labour market with confidence because they may be penalized by doing so. They might not earn enough to justify getting off welfare or other social programs. Obviously, with such a low unemployment rate, everyone benefits when the number of people in the labour force increases. We also want these people to have the dignity that comes with productive work and personal growth. We want them to feel as though they are contributing to the economy and becoming productive citizens.
The Canada workers benefit was created specifically to help those people and provide them with direct assistance. This year, eligible workers will automatically receive the benefit after filing their tax return, without submitting an application. They will be entitled to an increased Canada workers benefit. Our initiative will affect two million Canadians and lift 70,000 people out of poverty. They will be eligible for up to $1,300 in benefits tax free.
There is also the Canada child benefit, which will be indexed this year for the first time. In my riding of Gatineau alone, 11,260 payments were made in January 2018 for 19,860 children. An average payment of $540 a month represents a total of $6.1 million in the pockets of Gatineau parents. I am proud of this, because this money is going directly to those who need it most. These people must make choices for their children. They need to spend money to enrol their children in sports or piano lessons, or to invest in a registered education savings plan. We committed to make these choices, and these are choices that a Conservative government would never have made or maintained, because it wants to eliminate the deficit at any cost. One has to wonder what a Conservative government would cut. This is also a tax-free benefit that is automatically reinvested in our economy and in local businesses.
I am proud of these two measures. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to talk about the other wonderful initiatives in this year's budget.
I am particularly proud of the fact that we are keeping our word and fulfilling our commitments to the people who need it most. They can access these resources and become good, highly productive citizens who can keep contributing to the Canadian economy.