Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour for me to have the opportunity today to speak about how we must invest in the middle class and build an economy that works for everyone, an economy that provides more good, well-paying jobs for the middle class and helps those working hard to join it, an economy where everyone, no matter their age, can live and work with pride.
At the same time, people across the country want to protect their children and grandchildren from the dangers of climate change. They want to invest in technologies that will help us lower the cost of living and reduce the emissions that cause climate change.
A Canadian green deal is based on balance. Failing to invest in a cleaner more sustainable future threatens the things that Canadians rely on for their success: an affordable cost of living; good, well-paying jobs and resilient communities. It would make it harder to help those who are poor, because it would make it difficult to ensure that we have those things to pay for those services.
Climate change, as we know, is real, and we need to take action today. Budget 2019 made significant investments to protect Canada's environment while also creating new jobs and making life more affordable for Canadians. These investments go hand in hand with efforts to help more people find a home, find and keep good jobs, retire with confidence and get affordable prescription drugs when they need them. The budget also delivers on a promise of a stronger middle class, and advances the plan to protect the health of all Canadians, the health of our economy and the health of future generations.
During their 10 years, the Harper Conservatives ignored the needs of a better future for all, the needs of the environment, of the middle class, and especially the needs of those who are most poor in our society who want government to work for them. Today, more Canadians are working, more families have more money in their pockets and Canada's middle class is growing.
The current leader of the Conservative Party, as well as Ford and Harper, all spent time cutting services and are cutting services today, like local library services, day care centres and even tree planting. This is absolutely unconscionable. The priorities of Ford and the current leader of the Conservative Party are about slashing funds for city services while moving forward with a pricey campaign promise to bring beer into convenience stores. They want to make it cheaper and more affordable so that we can drink beer. “Where is the sense in that?”, said Mayor John Tory. “Cutting public health programs and daycare programs to find the extra money to pay the Beer Store to change their contract?” That is what he said.
In Manitoba, in alliance, the leader of the Conservative Party and Pallister continue to cut services, including emergency services at a hospital in my riding, the Misericordia Health Centre. They are about to cut it at the Concordia Hospital. Gone. They have been reducing services in health care right across the province.
In fact, Premier Brian Pallister is leaving money on the table, including $547 million for public transit, which is important to having a good climate change program to ensure we protect the environment. The Manitoba government left $451 million of green infrastructure dollars on the table. Where is the Canadian green deal in that, a deal based on balance? It is not with the Pallister government. It left $61 million behind for community, cultural and recreation infrastructure. We need more good programming to ensure we do not have the meth crisis we have in Winnipeg right now, and to ensure that young people do not have to join gangs in order to find something to do. The government also left $112 million of rural and northern programming on the table. It is absolutely unconscionable.
On this side of the House, we have taken action to ensure there is a price on pollution right across Canada in 2019. We have implemented a federal backstop system in jurisdictions that do not have a standard that meets that standard at the federal level. As part of this plan, the federal government will be returning the bulk of the direct proceeds from the fuel charge in the form of a climate action incentive payment directly to individuals in the provinces, meaning it is costed so that those dollars are going back to the citizens. The residents of Ontario, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have a government that is looking out for them and for all citizens. Their families can claim that climate incentive on their personal income tax returns. The remainder of the direct fuel charge proceeds will be used to support small and medium-sized businesses and other particularly affected sectors in these provinces.
The Canadian green deal is about balance. It is balanced to help reward good behaviour that will have an impact in protecting the environment and stop, or even at some point reverse, climate change.
As the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed last week, most households will receive more in climate action incentive payments than their increased costs resulting from the federal carbon pollution pricing system. People are going to be better off under this plan.
We know that climate change is not just an environmental issue but also an economic and social issue.
Our government's plan will grow the Canadian economy, build a nation of innovators and create good, well-paying jobs that strengthen the middle class.
Budget 2019 proposes significant investments and, above all, enables the government to implement new measures to help Canada's middle class and all those working hard to join it.
In budget 2019, our government announced several actions that build on our plan to help Canadians and support our communities. For example, we intend to lower the energy costs of Canadians by investing $1 billion to help increase energy efficiency in residential, commercial and multi-unit buildings. The budget also proposes to provide new infrastructure to help build cleaner and healthier communities through a major municipal infrastructure top-up investment of $2.2 billion. We are helping communities. This will double our government's commitment to municipalities and help communities fund their infrastructure priorities, including public transit, water and green energy projects. However, this is not all that we are doing.
We asked the wealthiest 1% of Canadians to pay a little more so that we could give the middle class a tax break. That tax break is helping over nine million Canadians.
We have also created the Canada child benefit, or the baby bonus. This baby bonus is important to the people of Winnipeg Centre. In 2018-19, every month, on average, we make 8,490 payments of the baby bonus to citizens in Winnipeg Centre, helping 15,510 children. It is helping to lift thousands of children out of poverty. It is $790 on average, which is $6,733,000 a month directly into the economy of the people of Winnipeg Centre.
This is not all that we have done. We have also helped seniors in my riding. We have made 9,580 payments under old age security, for an average of $6,520 under the guaranteed income supplement; 4,620 payments for an average of $6,490; as well as our top-up, which came in the last budget, of 2,620 new payments, for a total of $1,040 a month, to seniors in Winnipeg Centre. That is $96 million which is going to help Canadians advance in life.
In closing, I would like to say that Canadians want a plan that will enable them to prosper in a world where the climate is changing. Our government is investing in a cleaner and healthier future for all Canadians.
We have made a lot of progress since the fall of 2015, since the decade of darkness. However, we know there is more work to be done, and we are not going to lose sight of that goal. We will keep helping the middle class and those working hard to join it. Our government will work hard for Canadians to build an economy where everyone has a fair and true chance of succeeding, lifting thousands of Canadians out of poverty. We will ensure that our government works, not just for the few as under Harper, not just for those who might vote for them, but for all Canadians no matter what their political stripe, so that we ensure we are all better off in the future.