Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Saint-Laurent.
As we safely restart our economy in the midst of a global health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to transform Canadian society. Since a vaccine is probably still a few months away, the fight against this virus is far from over, and we simply cannot afford to lose any ground. The Speech from the Throne clearly stated that the federal government's number one job is to keep Canadians healthy while building a more resilient economy. Those two priorities go hand in hand.
As the Speech from the Throne indicated, our government's first priority will always be the health and well-being of Canadians. We must crush COVID and breathe life back into the health of our economy.
Our government continues to focus on limiting the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis by maximizing our chances of defeating the virus and to do this, we need Canadians to be ever more disciplined, to be even more respectful of public health guidelines. We all have a role and we are all key players in the team Canada approach.
We need our government to keep doing what we are doing: supporting Canadian research and biomanufacturing, working closely with researchers and scientists to better understand the COVID-19 virus, investing in the development of several promising vaccine candidates and ensuring that we can manufacture and distribute enough vaccine to as many Canadians as possible, as quickly as possible. This is what we have been doing and that is a key focus of the Speech from the Throne. We have signed agreements in principle with so many leaders in vaccine development, following the recommendations from the non-partisan COVID-19 vaccine task force.
The late John Turner once said that life is like a trust and everyone has a fiduciary obligation to give back what one has received from it. Our government knows that now is the time to give back to Canadians, to give back to Canadians particularly who are suffering. It is our fiduciary obligation to secure access to safe vaccines for Canadians, vaccines that will be subjected to rigorous Health Canada assessment and approval processes. We are fulfilling this fiduciary obligation to Canadians.
The Prime Minister also announced funding for the creation of a new biomanufacturing facility at the Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre in Montreal. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, I am delighted that this will guarantee our country's ability to produce enough supplies of vaccine for Canadians who need them, such as front-line workers, those working in long-term care and the most vulnerable.
A COVID-19 vaccine is vital if we are to put an end to this pandemic, fully restart our economy and build our resilience. We will move forward by adopting a sustainable approach to our economic recovery. We will work tirelessly to achieve our goals.
Many Canadians have gone back to work, but others are struggling and do not know whether they will keep their jobs if the crisis continues. We understand these fears and we are determined to help Canadians keep their jobs while addressing the many inequalities faced every day by people of colour, indigenous populations and other vulnerable groups.
This is exactly why the Speech from the Throne makes clear our intention to extend the Canada wage subsidy until the summer of 2021 and to reform the employment insurance system to protect all Canadians. We must, we are and we will continue to support all Canadians through this dual health and economic crisis. This is precisely what the Speech from the Throne states.
We must govern with a laser-like focus on the present every day for Canadians, but we also owe it to present and future generations, especially to our children, to the youngest generation, to govern through COVID-19 and rebuild with a view to the reality of climate change. Our government's Speech from the Throne does just that.
We will not fall victim to what some have called the tragedy of the horizon by losing sight of that other global crisis: climate change. We can, and will, govern with both eyes focused simultaneously on the present COVID-19 crisis and on building back a cleaner, more competitive and inclusive Canadian economy. As the Prime Minister recently commented, just because we are in a health crisis does not mean we can neglect an environmental crisis: a climate crisis for which we all know there is no vaccine.
Canadians are looking to our government to build back in a way that considers human and economic health in light of the impacts of climate change. As the Speech from the Throne clearly indicates, we are doing just that. We are building on important measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions, maximize efficiency and energy conservation, and we are driving the transition to a clean economy, offering job opportunities for Canadian workers and businesses in every region and every industry. For five years, while public debate was consumed with polarized, partisan rhetoric on carbon prices and pipelines, our government implemented many low-carbon industrial policy shifts and ramped up clean technology investments by 50% at Sustainable Development Technology Canada. It is one of our government's most positive climate action stories that no one seems to have heard about. From phasing out coal-fired electricity and moving toward banning single-use plastics to preparing national building code reforms and offering a $5,000 electric vehicle rebate, more changes are on the way to deliver a path to net zero emissions by 2050.
Of course we need to do more, and we will. We will continue to invest historic amounts in both basic and applied scientific research, including COVID and climate science, within the federal government and post-secondary institutions. As the Speech from the Throne clearly commits, in the upcoming parliamentary session we will deliver on our commitments to enact climate legislation with binding five-year targets to meet and exceed our Paris targets for 2030. We will also legislate Canada's goal of net zero emissions by 2050. This is climate action. We will also table legislation to tighten federal regulation of toxic substances.
I look forward to the right to a healthy environment being enshrined in Canadian law once and for all. We will keep putting a price on pollution while putting that money right back in the pockets of Canadians. It cannot be free to pollute. The government will ban single-use plastics, as previously mentioned, and we need to make sure we have the best science behind it so the decisions to do so will not be overturned in Canadian courts. All of this will drive market opportunities and job creation in the green economy, further enabling our economic recovery.
As part of the plan we announced in the throne speech, the Government of Canada will take the following measures: It will create thousands of jobs retrofitting homes and buildings, cutting energy costs for Canadian families and businesses; invest in reducing the impact of climate-related disasters, like the floods that affected my constituents in Pontiac, to make communities more resilient; help deliver more public transit and active transit options, which will help the tourism and recreational tourism industries in the Outaouais and across Canada; make zero-emission vehicles more affordable and accessible; invest in more research infrastructure across the country; and support investments in renewable energy and next-generation clean energy and technology solutions.
Our government will ensure Canada is the most competitive jurisdiction in the world for clean technology companies.
In conclusion, the Speech from the Throne has charted a solid path forward. We will protect Canadians' health, preserve jobs and focus on the crisis of COVID here and now, while not losing focus on the climate crisis we must tackle for the future.