Madam Speaker, I am very happy to stand in the House today to talk about our 2018 budget. It is a fitting budget, called “Equality + Growth: A Strong Middle Class”, which is the direction our government is leading in Canada.
This budget is the next step in the government's plan, which is investing in people, investing in communities, and investing in our economy. It has already been able to put more money in the pockets of Canadians, it has helped create more well-paying jobs, and it is giving Canadians greater confidence in their future.
Since November 2015, when we took office, Canadians have created more than 500,000 new jobs, and the unemployment rate has fallen from 7.1% to 5.9%, close to its lowest level in over four decades. The Canadian economy has been very strong, growing at a pace that is well above all the other G7 countries since mid-2016.
Measures like those that we introduced around middle-class tax cuts and a new Canadian child benefit mean that Canadian families now have more money to save, invest, and spend on their families and in their communities because we have lower taxes for the middle class and we are helping them with the high-level cost of raising a family in many regions of this country. Therefore, Canadians are felling more optimistic about the future, and I certainly feel that in the riding that I represent.
Whether it is the ability to be able to save a little more, to buy a home for the first time, to go back to school and train for a new job, or obtain employment in regions where it has often been difficult, these are all things that people see as strength in our economy and in their communities. As the government, we are going to continue to grow that sector, to create those jobs that people want, and to ensure that people have opportunities.
New investments will support many pieces of infrastructure across Canadian communities. One of those pieces that has been critically important to many first nations, Inuit, and Métis communities in Canada has been the ability to ensure good housing on and off reserve in communities, as well as the ability to ensure that they have access to clean drinking water.
Investments we are making in this budget include committing over $170 million over the next three years to continue on the path of improving access to clean and safe drinking water on reserve. The Minister of Indigenous Services has been very adamant on meeting this target and ensuring that long-term drinking water advisories in Canadian communities, especially indigenous communities, are eliminated.
We have also been making tremendous investments in housing. In the northern part of my riding, in the Inuit region of Nunatsiavut or in either of the first nation communities, if we were to ask today what their number one infrastructure priority was, they would say that it is housing. For the first time, every indigenous government had the ability to deliver on housing money in their own regions. Last year, for the first time, Inuit across the north received direct transfers from the Government of Canada to ensure that they were able to build and modify houses to meet their immediate needs.
This year's budget includes an additional $600 million over the next three years to support housing on reserve for first nations communities. It includes an Inuit-led housing plan for Inuit regions such as Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Inuvialuit, and the government has proposed $400 million over the next 10 years to address the needs of housing in Inuit communities. This is in addition to the $240 million that was announced in budget 2017.
The government is also proposing $500 million over the next 10 years to support the Métis nation's housing strategy. These housing strategies are important to indigenous Canadians. It is important that they have proper housing in their communities in order to make real progress in many other areas where they have concerns.
This year I was proud to be a member of Parliament in the Government of Canada, representing the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, because we saw major transfer increases to our province from the federal government. We saw increases in the Canadian health transfer and the Canadian social transfer, increases that will allow the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to meet and address some of the growing needs we have as a province, which ridings like mine are dealing with. For example, there are issues with respect to mental health and suicide. Here there are fundamental social programs that our government has continued to invest in. We have worked with indigenous communities in my riding to develop suicide strategies and to invest in those strategies, working side by side with them to eliminate and reduce suicide and addiction levels in communities.
We also work with those indigenous governments and the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador to invest more in mental health and addiction services. Last week I had the opportunity to be in Happy Valley–Goose Bay with the premier to announce that for the first time ever there will be six mental health beds opening at the hospital in Labrador and that two psychiatrists will be hired in that rural northern region where we have never had those services.
This is a government that is listening to the needs of Canadians. No matter how remote or how northern or how isolated those Canadians are, it is listening and acting to ensure that it meets the needs and addresses the issues that are important in those regions.
There were many things in this budget that my constituents and people across the country were proud of. I want to outline what some of those pieces are. I think it is important that we reiterate the investments that we are making, because these are not our investments but the investments that Canadians have asked for. We have worked with Canadians to form a vision of where they would like their country to be going. What we do as a government is in response to what they are asking.
I represent a riding that until a few years ago was basically unconnected in many ways, whether it was through Internet and broadband or through highway transportation and ferry services. As a government, we have invested in those areas. To date, we have been able to to build nearly 400 kilometres of paved road through one of the most northern remote regions of the country in my riding. We have invested in some of the smallest communities to allow them to have Internet and broadband access, a basic service that many Canadians have enjoyed for many years.
We have also listened when people talked to us about the need for EI reform for those people who work in seasonal industries, the need for reform for women and parents who are taking leave to have a child, the need to extend maternity leave benefits, and the need to look at sick benefits for people who have to care for sick family members, sick children, or themselves.
We listened to northerners across Canada when they told us that the northern tax deduction had not increased in many years, and we acted to ensure that northerners are receiving tax deductions that allow them to have a better quality of life, like other Canadians.
We have invested in small craft harbours, having listened to the fishing industry, which quite often had been ignored by previous governments, ensuring they have the infrastructure in their communities to create jobs in an industry that has allowed for tremendous opportunity in the Atlantic regions of our country.
We also brought great certainty to military operations. I represent a riding that is home to 5 Wing Goose Bay. For the first time in many years, we have ensured the operational requirements of that base and its stability and longevity as part of the national infrastructure for defence in this country.
We support workers in communities that I represent, such as Wabush and Labrador West, which are heavily engaged in the mining industry.
This budget is a reflection of Canadians.