Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Richmond Hill.
It is an absolute honour for me to rise in the House today to speak on behalf of the residents in my riding of Davenport. I am truly proud to speak on this historic budget. I have so much to say that I suspect I am going to be running out of time.
I want to begin by acknowledging that my riding, which is in downtown west Toronto, like many places in the GTA, is currently under attack by a devastating third wave of this pandemic. There are four postal codes in my Davenport riding that are considered hot spots for COVID cases. I want to pay special tribute to all the essential workers in my riding, who have already spent more than a year working around the clock to save us and keep us healthy. I want to thank everyone who works in a hospital or a long-term care home, working to exhaustion to keep people safe.
I also want to say a huge thanks to everyone who is working to keep us fed, healthy and safe. I thank those who are working in grocery stores, food services, factories and the TTC and doing all the jobs that keep our committees going. I know they face more risks every single day with the variants that are out there and the risks are much greater, so a heartfelt thanks to all of them.
This pandemic has hit us hard not only from a health perspective, but also from an economic perspective. The COVID recession is the steepest and the fastest since the Great Depression. Some people may look at our government's historic, ambitious budget, which invests over $100 billion over three years, and say that we are overdoing it. What I would like to point out, and I know our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance has pointed this out, is that we learned from our last recession. It took over 10 years for employment levels to fully recover. We know the investments at that time were limited. We have learned our lessons. We are not going to make the same mistake in federal budget 2021. The economic and human costs of inaction are too great.
As I am sure members have heard, because they have heard so many speeches thus far, there are three key sections in budget 2021: conquering COVID, punching out of this recession, and building a better future. I will touch very briefly on the first two but spend most of my time on the last section and how we are building back Canada better.
With respect to the first part, conquering COVID, as the current third wave is showing us, we are not done with COVID. To conquer the virus, the federal government needs to continue to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to keep Canadians safe, healthy and supported, and federal budget 2021 has allocated even more funding to extending supports to workers and benefits. We are extending the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy until September 25. We are extending the Canada recovery benefit by another 12 weeks, and we are maintaining flexible EI rules for an extra year until the fall of 2022. Some of the supports taper off a bit in the summer as we expect and hope that our economy will rebound. I know that Davenport workers and businesses can now plan around these supports and know that, as always, our government will be there if they need us. We will have their backs.
On the vaccine front, I am very proud of the fast action of our federal Liberal government early into the pandemic. We have secured contracts for more doses per capita than any other country, and more candidate vaccines. Our vaccine rollout is now third in the G20, behind only the U.S. and the U.K. Around 24% to 25% of our population has been vaccinated with one dose. We are investing a lot to rebuild our own domestic vaccine manufacturing. Budget 2021 proposes over $2 billion more for that, because we know that there is a very high risk that we will need booster shots and maybe even modified vaccines as we move forward, and we want to have the opportunity to be able to create that here in Canada.
Next, I want to talk a bit about punching our way out of this COVID recession. We know that many sectors have been disproportionately devastated by COVID, such as tourism, arts and culture, and the airline industry, among many others. We also know that small and medium-sized businesses have been greatly impacted. We only need to walk along our main streets to see the absolute devastation. Budget 2021 provides quite a bit of support for our small and medium-sized businesses to help them adopt and upgrade their digital technology, rehire laid-off workers and bring on new ones. It provides some special financing that is going to help them to be even better prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the economy moving forward.
In terms of additional supports for many of our hardest-hit industries, I mentioned tourism and festivals and events. There are a lot of events that happen within my own community. We have a huge comedy festival and lots of multi-ethnic festivals, and I know that they will benefit from the $1 billion of additional support that we have put into budget 2021.
I want to give a special shout-out to the arts and culture community in my riding of Davenport. They are huge, vibrant and impactful not only to my local community but to our city and nation. We also have an additional $1 billion of support for the arts and culture sector.
I will devote the rest of time to how we are building back better. There is so much I want to cover, and I will run out of time, but I will do my best to cover the most important elements to the residents in my riding of Davenport.
First is national child care. A lot of people think that downtown, west Toronto is a very wealthy area. However, most of the people in my riding are working-class. There are many working families who are struggling with the highest child care costs in the country. The introduction in budget 2021 of a national child care program will be an absolute game-changer for them. I truly believe that it is the single best thing we can do to restart our economy and to put a solid foundation for our economy for future success. It is going to increase the participation in our workforce that will result in an increase in our GDP. Investing in our kids, investing to ensure that we have full participation is going to be critical for Canada's success in a knowledge and digital economy. Of course, quality early learning and child care will be a great, best possible start for our children. We are setting them up for success early on in their lives.
The next thing I want to talk about are the huge investments we are making on a green recovery and doubling and tripling down on climate action. I will tell members that the number one letter that comes in from Davenport residents outside of anything related to COVID is about ensuring that, as we restart and regrow our economy, we are making sure that we do not stop on our urgent quest to get to net zero by 2050. Our budget commits an additional $18 billion in investments that puts us on track to reducing our emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. Our budget actually says 36%, but this morning, our Prime Minister announced that we are actually increasing our ambition to decreasing our carbon emissions to between 40% and 45% below 2005 levels by 2030.
We do have an action plan in place. Mark Carney was saying a couple of weeks ago that Canada is the first of the G7 countries with a climate policy serious enough to make a difference. We are serious about our green recovery, we are serious about moving to net zero and we have a serious plan that is going to ensure that we get there, and now this budget ensures that we have the financial resources to be able to do so.
For workers, we are going to be massively increasing our Canada worker benefit and increasing the federal minimum wage, which is a huge promise of our government and something really important for Davenport residents. We are also extending EI sickness benefits from 15 weeks to 26 weeks, which is something that many of our communities, non-profit organizations and advocates have been asking for. This is going to be a game-changer for those who are seriously ill and do not want to have to think about taking care themselves or making a choice between taking care of themselves and putting food on the table.
There are significant investments in our seniors, long-term care standards and increasing the OAS for those over 75. We also have a lot of investments in youth that I am really proud of. We want to make sure that they are not a lost generation. As well, there is over $18 billion to help support our indigenous people toward reconciliation and righting the wrongs of Canada's past and present.
I will end by saying that we have put a significant amount of money around migrant workers and immigration, which is close to my heart, because I believe that future Canadian economic success depends on a great immigration policy.