Debates of April 29th, 2024

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Mona Fortier, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have to say that I am actually very happy that we are starting the first step with a meaningful investment. We have to do more, and we should continue to do more. However, this is a game-changer for community members in Ottawa—Vanier. It needs to pass, and then we could continue to build on this first step.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, Housing; the hon. member for Spadina—Fort York, National Defence; the hon. member for Yorkton—Melville, Finance.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay.

It is always an honour to rise in the House to represent the people of London—Fanshawe. I am incredibly proud to do so and am happy to speak to this year's budget.

I, like so many I know in the House, am worried when I talk to constituents who are falling further and further behind. My constituents are working hard, paying their fair share and contributing to our country and our economy in so many ways, but the programs and systems upon which they rely are not supporting them in the ways that they should. I am a proud New Democrat and member of a party that worked continuously to create programs that support Canadians, but we know that not every party believes we should all pay our fair share, and other parties, time after time, work to ensure that only those people at the top, those with the most power and wealth, do not contribute to the benefits we should all enjoy.

That is not the NDP approach. As Jack Layton often said, it is the opposition's job not only to oppose but also to propose. The role of opposition is not to spend four years campaigning or using slogans to divide people, and I am proud to say that I can return to my constituents and speak about the real wins that New Democrats have secured. We have used our power to lay the foundations for public single-payer pharmacare for Canadians, beginning with free birth control for nine million Canadians and diabetes medication and device coverage for 3.7 million Canadians. We used our power to deliver dental care, with 1.7 million seniors already registered for the single biggest expansion of our health care system since Tommy Douglas.

We have also used our power for solutions to the housing crisis, and we do see some of that in the budget. For years, the NDP has raised concerns about the financialization of housing. I believe that housing is a human right, but the financialization of housing has eroded that right by turning homes into commodities for the wealthy. Across Canada, 30% of purpose-built rental housing is owned by institutional investors. That means that young people are not only being shut out of owning a home but also, even when they are renting, being put at the mercy of greedy corporate landlords. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments decided to hand over our right of housing to the free market alone, and since the 1990s, the federal government has completely stepped away from investing in non-market housing.

The government used to partner in the development of non-profit, co-operative and social housing to ensure that those who needed it had a place to live. It should be the role of government to create a balance on housing that benefits everyone. When housing is not ruled by a handful of corporations, it does so much better, and we need renters to be empowered so they are not accepting incredibly high rental hikes. However, since the government got out of housing, we have lost affordable housing units. When the Conservatives were last in power, we lost 800,000 affordable housing units that were bought up by corporate landlords.

Londoners know what happens when the housing market is left, unchecked, to the free market. According to a report by Acorn Canada, London is one of the top five Ontario cities for renovictions. I have spoken to the House repeatedly and asked the government repeatedly about renovictions in London. Last year, the leader of my party and I joined a rally for tenants of Webster Street apartments. The tenants' homes had been sold to a Toronto-based corporate landlord, and the tenants were immediately issued eviction notices. They included an 83-year-old woman on a fixed income. She had been living there for years, and rent increase caps meant she could afford her home, but when she got the eviction notice, she had no affordable options. The greedy corporate landlords have forced her and other tenants on Webster out of their homes so they can gouge the next tenants on rent.

According to a January CMHC report, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in London was $1,479. That is already unaffordable, but it gets worse when tenants turn over because of renovictions. The report found that rent for a two-bedroom unit with a new tenant averaged 27.6% higher than for other apartments in the same building. We need to protect renters on Webster Street and across Canada. That is why New Democrats pushed for meaningful action in the budget and why I am very happy to see that we were able to secure the $1.5 billion for the rental protection fund. That money will be used to protect renters from losing their affordable homes to corporate landlords and will purchase and transition buildings for sale into non-market housing.

That is not all we fought for in the budget. A UNICEF report ranked Canada 37th out of 41 countries in nutritious food for children. At a time when corporations like Loblaw are making $1 million in profits every day, millions of Canadians are turning to food banks. Parents are doing everything they can to take care of their kids, but Galen Weston and his friends just keep driving up the cost of food. Let me be very clear that decades of consecutive governments have peeled away Canada's social safety net. Successive governments have prioritized the bottom line of folks like Galen and his friends over working families, and have ignored warnings about food insecurity for our children.

The leader of the NDP and I joined the Lunchbox London group, a not-for-profit organization that provides over 600 food bundles to families in need and addresses some of the food insecurity of kids in school from kindergarten to age 12. Its work is essential for our community, and after decades of neo-liberal cuts, one in six London-Middlesex households faces food insecurity.

The NDP could have solely opposed progress in this way, and we could have spent years pointing to the horrible insecurity statistics for kids, but instead we chose to use our power to fight for those kids, so there is now the $1-billion national school food program. Until now, Canada was the only G7 country that did not have such a program, but now more than 400,000 more children will be able to access nutritious food each year, and I am very proud of the NDP's work to secure that food for children. However, this is only a first step, as has been mentioned many times in the House, and the NDP envisions a truly universal national school food program where every kid, no matter their postal code, knows they will have a nutritious meal.

I am also very proud of a lot of the things we have accomplished over the last couple of years. The New Democrats, with our small but mighty caucus, have made real gains for Canadians, but we are not the government, as much as the Conservatives will debate otherwise, and this is not an NDP budget. At the end of the day, the New Democrats have pushed as far as we can, but so much of the budget does not go far enough, and if it were not for the NDP, the budget would not address the concerns of Canadians.

However, I do want to address one of the concerns I have with the budget, something I and many of my colleagues are not happy with. Of course, this is the disability benefit. Of Canadians living with a disability, 1.4 million live in poverty, and those with the most severe disabilities often live in the deepest poverty. Liberal and Conservative governments, provincially and federally, have balanced the books on the back of legislating persons with disabilities into poverty.

My office has heard from so many community members facing legislated poverty. We have worked with community members who have even gone on hunger strikes to raise awareness of the horrific conditions imposed upon them. We know that it is not enough to raise people out of poverty, and we know that attaching the benefit to the disability tax credit will create serious systemic barriers to access. I hope that when the government said that this is a first step, it truly means that it is only a first step and that we will soon see additional measures to ensure that people living with disabilities do not continue to suffer.

To wrap up, I wanted to reflect on the state overall of what we are seeing in Canada and in politics. On one hand, there is a Liberal government whose arm has to be twisted to come close to meeting its own promises. Time after time, it resists every step toward dental care, pharmacare, renters' protection and the school food program. On the other hand, there is an ideologically driven Conservative leader who tries to divide Canadians and exploit our real pains for electoral gain while his advisers take out big cheques from big corporate interests.

Canadians are facing an incredible cost of living increase, and the NDP, instead of spending the four years just in opposition, decided to use its power to deliver for Canadians, and we want to continue to fight for those solutions. This is not an NDP government and this is not an NDP budget, but this is what happens when enough Canadians reject the legacy parties and dare to elect a party that has the courage to fight for what is right. New Democrats will keep fighting against the corporate coalition and will put people first.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member across the way for highlighting the disability benefit and the opportunity that it is going to provide going forward.

Could the hon. member comment on how important it is that the benefit, as we are structuring it now, does not get clawed back by provincial and territorial governments, that it is a tax-free benefit that, once we have established the pattern of payment, will not revert to a clawback program?

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is one of the key things the government has to work for: to ensure that those funds, as meagre as they are at six dollars a day, are not clawed back. It will do people living with disabilities in this country absolutely no good if that money is given with one hand and taken back with the other.

It is fully incumbent upon the government to do that work. I would love to see that happen, sooner rather than later, to ensure that people do not continue to suffer.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite has told us that she does not belong to part of the government, but in my hand I have a copy of the supply and confidence agreement that was signed by the NDP. It is the agreement between the NDP and the Liberal government. I would like to table this document. I have it in both official languages. Perhaps—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member already tried to table that earlier today. I do want to remind her that when she is speaking, she cannot point to a document as it is considered to be a prop.

Does the hon. member have a question?

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have heard from constituents across Middlesex and across London who are facing hard times right now. They cannot afford food. They are going to food banks in record numbers. Of course, we have a rural area around London where people are paying a high carbon tax.

Would the member for London—Fanshawe like to comment on why she continues to support the Liberal government with the carbon tax and why she will not vote in favour of Bill C-234 to axe the tax for our farmers?

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, I always find it very interesting when Conservatives stand up to talk about who they are trying to help. Ultimately, “axing the tax”, as they call it, would help the wealthiest in this country. I would like to ensure that Canadians do not fall for that misnomer. Conservatives try to sell it as if they are fighting for people when they are actually fighting for corporate profits.

Maybe, later on in debate, the member could tell us why her party refused to vote for a national school food program, which we know will help students and families with the nutrition they need. Why would they vote against pharmacare, which would go directly back into the pockets of women who deserve and need contraception, as well as the pockets of people who live with diabetes?

Why would the member vote against that sort of measure and why would she vote against the dental benefit? Those measures would help people across Middlesex, across London, and across this country with the everyday costs that seniors, especially, are facing. I would like to know why she would vote against those things that would actually help people's pocketbooks.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, people have been saying for years that we should be investing more in the environment and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. They will always be there; we just need to stop using them so lavishly all over the place.

That said, this government's budgets keep giving money to the oil and gas industry indirectly or in the form of tax credits. Is my colleague comfortable with that part of the budget, which undermines our environment year after year? Amounts allocated to the environment are laughable compared to investments in the fossil fuel industry.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, New Democrats have been at the forefront of pushing back against those corporate giveaways to the oil and gas sector. It is incumbent on those corporate owners to pay their fair share.

As I said in my speech, we will continue to push against that. This is not an NDP budget. I will fight for the day when we see a fair share being paid by everyone in order to ensure that we have a safe, healthy future, both with all those social programs and in terms of our environment.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, today, as we have heard, we are debating the budget introduced by the Liberal government a couple of weeks ago. We have also heard, time and time again, how Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. They are having a hard time finding housing they can afford, facing soaring rents and rising mortgage costs, or even finding anywhere to live at all. They are seeing rising food costs at grocery stores and paying more for gas at the pumps.

On the other side of the coin, Canadians are seeing big corporations, oil and gas companies, grocery giants, corporate landlords and big banks making absolutely record profits. The more we pay for gas, for food, for housing, the more those corporations and their CEOs are making billions of dollars in profits. People are looking for ways the government could be helping them get by, because it does not have to be this way.

In this budget, the NDP has used its power to force the government to help Canadians. It is a glimpse of what an NDP government would be doing, which is what is best for ordinary Canadians and not for big corporations and the wealthy. However, I will say that this is not an NDP budget, and I will certainly spend some time talking about how it could have been improved greatly.

What did the NDP accomplish for Canadians? First is dental care, which will change the lives of nine million Canadians when it is fully rolled out to all qualifying people next year. Free birth control will benefit another nine million Canadians who now have to pay for those products. Free diabetes medication will benefit 3.7 million Canadians with this disease. Insulin was discovered in Canada, but every year thousands of Canadians, many of them younger Canadians, die prematurely because they simply cannot afford the medication needed to control diabetes. These are completely preventable deaths, and it is shameful that Canada has been allowing this to happen for many years. Thanks to the NDP, this will get fixed.

These provisions are the leading edge of the NDP's program of a universal, publicly funded, single-payer pharmacare plan that will be developed over the next year through legislation outside of this budget. It is a program that will save Canadians billions of dollars every year. Estimates from the Parliamentary Budget Officer and expert studies done for the government estimate savings of between $4 billion and maybe more than $10 billion per year through a single-payer plan.

Thanks to the NDP, this budget also contains funding for school meals, which will help all children, no matter their situation, with the nutrition and energy they need to succeed in their studies. Education is the great equalizer, but we have to provide all students with the conditions for success, and this school meal program will be an important part of those conditions.

The housing crisis is affecting millions of Canadians and there are some real steps in this budget to address that, such as a rental protection fund, a program to use federal lands to build new affordable housing and a $400-million top-up to the housing accelerator fund. There is $1 billion set aside for non-market housing to build truly affordable homes, again, something the NDP has been asking for, in contrast to the Conservatives who seem to think that if we just build more units prices will magically become affordable.

In my riding, we are building more housing units than we have ever built before, but according to municipal planners, every day we have fewer affordable housing units. These additional units that are being built are simply bought up by people who already own homes and people who are using them as investments. We need more affordable units, and to accomplish that the federal government has to get back into the affordable housing business like it was 30 years ago.

I would like to highlight a couple of smaller line items that may not have gotten as much publicity but will still make a huge difference to all Canadians.

I entered politics to provide a voice from a scientific background to Parliament. Science and research are the real basis of a successful economy in this day and age, and I have been calling on the government for two years now to provide more support for researchers, especially young researchers.

Postgraduate students do most of the research in Canada and are expected to work full time at that job. The best and brightest of these are funded through federal scholarships and fellowships that have remained at the same level since 2003, over 20 years ago. Master's students have been expected to live on $17,500 a year. Out of that, they have to pay their tuition fees, which are $7,000.

Finally, in this budget, the government has recognized that shameful situation and has significantly increased the amount and number of these supports, as well as provided an overall increase in research grants to investigators, which will help even more young researchers do the work they want to do and that we need them to do.

On another front, I want to give a shout-out to my colleague, the MP for Courtenay—Alberni, who has been leading the charge for an increase to the tax credit for volunteer firefighters. Previously, those brave and generous members of communities across the country have received only a $3,000 tax credit for the work they do to keep us safe. This budget would increase that to $6,000, short of the $10,000 we were hoping for but still a significant increase for very deserving community members.

What is missing from this budget? How does it differ from one that an NDP government would bring in?

First of all, there is the Canada disability benefit, something the NDP has been fighting for. We were hoping that it would finally be there in this budget, to really lift people with disabilities out of poverty. It is there but it is a paltry $200 a month, a complete insult. The NDP will continue fighting for people with disabilities, to make sure this benefit will be enough and to make sure they will have at least $2,000 per month to live in dignity.

I was also disappointed that there is no provision for a national wildfire fighting force, which could really benefit every community facing the rising threat of wildfires every summer.

Once again, the government has been timid in its willingness to try to address one of the biggest threats to this country and its economy, and that is the growing gap between the rich and the rest of Canada. Harper Conservatives cut the corporate income tax in half, immediately putting a $16-billion burden on middle-class Canadians. That cut was made in the name of trickle-down economics, the outdated and debunked belief that, if we give tax breaks to the wealthy, it would trickle down to the rest of us in the form of more jobs and benefits. It has not happened. The profits of corporations have climbed steadily over the past 30 years, while wages have remained stagnant.

Most Canadians are paying more in tax and getting nothing in return. The Liberal government, and the Conservatives would certainly be no different, refuses to put a windfall tax on big oil and gas companies that are making a killing on the backs of Canadians. Other countries such as Spain and the U.K. have brought in such a tax, a measure that would bring in about a billion dollars a year. We could also bring in a wealth tax that would affect only those very few Canadians with personal wealth of over $10 million. Such a tax would bring in another $12 billion per year.

It is often said in this place that budgets are about choices. We have to make choices on both sides of the ledger, spending wisely to make sure that Canadians have the programs that make this the best country it can be and leave no one behind, and finding revenue options that ensure that the costs of those programs are borne by those who can afford it.

We know that this budget could have been better. We know that, under a Conservative government, it would have been far worse. An NDP government would truly put the interests of ordinary Canadians first, not the interests of big corporations or CEOs. We would listen to workers and other Canadians who are really struggling, not to lobbyists for grocery giants, fossil fuel companies and big pharma.

We are proud of what the NDP has accomplished by using the power we have to take a big step in making this a fairer and more prosperous country.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member across the way for his tireless advocacy on behalf of science in Canada and the work that he did on the science committee to bring forward the recommendations to have additional investments in science.

Could the hon. member comment on how this is a beginning of a new era for science in Canada and how we can continue to support citizen science as well as indigenous science in the future?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member for Guelph's work as chair of the science and research committee.

I hope this is the start of a new future for science and research. It is certainly a big step in that direction, where we actually recognize the very important work that not only young researchers do in Canada, but also scientific researchers in general. There was a considerable uplift in the amounts of the grants given to researchers across the country, and that will also help fund students.

Canada is so far behind other countries in the OECD and in the G7. I had someone from the British High Commission come into my office a couple of weeks ago, and it was kind of embarrassing when I heard what the U.K. has been doing for research compared to what Canada has been doing. This is where we are going to form a really solid economy for the future. We have to make those investments in research and have to develop the information technology that will make this, and continue to make this, a great country.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech. He has a big heart, and it shows in everything he says.

Where this budget talks about health care, it directly infringes on a jurisdiction of the Province of Quebec. Health care is a shared jurisdiction, and the federal government should not interfere with it.

I think that the budget before us shows interference. Despite the good intentions voiced by my colleague, I would like to know how much importance he places on that interference.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would have to say that Quebec has been leading the rest of Canada in many of these areas, in parts of health care, in education, in child care, and the list goes on. I salute Quebec for that leadership in showing the way, literally, for the rest of Canada.

Here, we have a federal government that is trying to make sure that Canadians can live better lives when we have better health care and better education, and when we have child care so that everyone can get back into the job market. Perhaps these are ideas we are getting from Quebec, but I think that if the federal government has those initiatives and has the money, we have to put some sort of boundaries on where that money is going to be spent. Right now, we send money to the provinces to fund post-secondary education, and they can spend it on filling potholes in roads. We want to make sure the money is being spent for the reasons we are providing it. Those are taxpayer dollars.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I would like to thank my excellent colleague from South Okanagan—West Kootenay. I always enjoy his interventions, his great work and his leadership on educating us in the area of science.

I want to ask him a quick question about what the budget could do to make sure that we are doing better to address climate change. I know he is in a riding where that is a huge issue. I wonder if he could speak to that.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, of course residents of Nunavut are really at the pointy end of climate change as well. Things are changing there much faster. Yes, we have to put everything we can into fighting climate change, fighting our emissions and adapting to climate change.

My riding is in the middle of all those wildfires we hear about, and there are floods everywhere as well. Therefore, we have to spend more on preventing climate change, doing our bit not only to bring down emissions, but also to adapt to climate change. I mentioned the wildfire fighting force. We have to do more things on the ground ahead of time to make sure communities are safe from the floods, from fires and from other disasters being fuelled by climate change.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence]

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to the urgent action in budget 2024 that would help Canada build the homes needed to restore fairness for every generation.

Last week, our government released Canada's ambitious plan to build homes by the millions, to support renters and to lower the costs of home ownership so that no hard-working Canadians have to spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing costs. With budget 2024 and with Canada's housing plan, we are going to do what is necessary to put money on the table to build more affordable housing, to create the market conditions necessary to get more homes built and to change the way cities build homes.

We will restore the promise of Canada for everyone, building more homes faster. We know that the higher interest rate environments have made it difficult to build homes. That is why we are proposing significant action in budget 2024 to boost housing supply and to remove barriers that often slow down construction of new homes. For example, we are reviving and modernizing Canada's post-war housing design catalogue, which will provide blueprints that can be used across the country to speed up construction of new homes.

Budget 2024 proposes to allocate more than $11 million in 2024-25 to support the development of this catalogue for up to 50 housing designs, including row housing and fourplexes that provinces, territories and municipalities could use to simplify and to accelerate housing approvals and builds. This first phase of the catalogue will be published by fall 2024.

Speaking of supporting municipalities, our $4 billion housing accelerator fund is already cutting red tape across the country with 179 agreements with municipalities, provinces and territories, including Surrey Centre, enabling the construction of over 750,000 new homes over the next decade. To continue this momentum, budget 2024 would top up this program with $400 million to build more homes faster from coast to coast to coast.

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member of Parliament for Whitby.

To help developers get that capital, they need to build more rental homes. We are also topping up the apartment construction loan program, or ACLP, with $15 billion, starting next year. This proposed investment alone would build more than 30,000 additional homes across Canada, bringing the program's total contribution to over 131,000 new homes by 2031. This program has already been kick-started in Surrey Centre with thousands of homes already under construction.

We know that there is no single player who could fill Canada's housing shortage on his or her own. That is why we need to take a team Canada approach to getting this work done for Canadians, and that means all of us working together and using every tool in our tool kit to get more homes built. To that end, budget 2024 announces Canada builds, which would help to leverage the apartment construction loan program so that we could better partner with provinces and territories to build more rental housing across the country.

Truthfully, we could not do any of this without Canada's builders, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, construction workers and similar tradespeople. They are incredible people who love their jobs and who are good at them, and to whom we should all be grateful because we could not build homes without them.

To help train and recruit the next generation of skilled workers, budget 2024 proposes to provide $90 million over two years for the apprenticeship service to help create placements with small and medium-sized enterprises for apprentices, and $10 million over two years is also being proposed for the skilled trades awareness and readiness program to encourage Canadians to explore and to prepare for careers in the skilled trades.

In addition, budget 2024 proposes to provide $50 million over two years for the foreign credential recognition program, at least half of which would be used to streamline foreign credential recognition in the construction sector to help skilled trades workers build more homes. We need to do everything we can to make it easier to build homes more quickly and more cost effectively, and the measures I just outlined do exactly that.

Young Canadians in my community of Surrey Centre, and across Canada, are struggling to find housing that fits their budgets. That is why the government launched the tax-free first home savings account and why, in budget 2024, we would take action to unlock additional pathways for young renters to become homeowners and to protect middle-class homeowners from rising mortgage payments.

To help first-time homebuyers keep pace with rising costs, budget 2024 announces our intention to amend the Income Tax Act to increase the home buyers' plan withdrawal limit from $35,000 to $60,000. The budget also proposes to temporarily extend the grace period, during which homebuyers are not required to repay their home buyers' plan withdrawals to their RRSP by an additional three years. This first measure would enable first-time homebuyers to save up to $25,000 for their down payment, faster. For a couple who withdraws the maximum in 2023, extending the grace period could allow them to defer annual payments as large as $4,600 by an additional three years.

Thanks to our new Canadian mortgage charter, more Canadians know about the fair, reasonable and timely mortgage relief they can seek and receive from their financial institutions. Budget 2024 would aim to enhance this charter by enabling first-time homebuyers purchasing new builds to get 30-year mortgage amortizations, among other enhancements. The government would bring forward regulatory amendments to implement this proposal.

Additionally, budget 2024 proposes to call on banks, fintechs and credit bureaus to prioritize tools that would allow renters to opt in to reporting their rent payment histories to credit bureaus so that they could strengthen their credit scores when applying for a mortgage.

We are also committed to protecting tenant rights and ensuring that renting a home is fair, open and transparent. For that reason, budget 2024 proposes action to protect the millions of Canadians who rent and who have been exceptionally impacted by recent drastic rent increases across the country.

This action would include the development of a new Canadian renters' bill of rights to be developed and implemented in partnership with provinces and territories, a new $15-million tenant protection fund and a new $1.5-billion Canada rental protection fund that would help housing providers keep rents at a stable level for a long time. That is how one makes the playing field fairer for renters.

Our government is also redoubling our efforts to build homes wherever and whenever possible in the face of Canada's housing crisis. We are accelerating and streamlining the process of converting surplus federal properties into housing, and we continue to work with Canada Lands Company to enable the construction of additional housing units.

In fact, budget 2024 proposes $5 million over three years, starting in 2024-25, to support an overhaul of Canada Lands Company to expand its activities to build more homes on public lands.

Budget 2024 also announces that the government would take steps to enable Canada Post to prioritize leasing or divestment of post office properties and lands with high potential for housing, where doing so maintains high service standards for Canadians.

Lastly, as part of our work to build more homes on public lands, budget 2024 proposes to explore the redevelopment of National Defence properties in Halifax, Toronto and Victoria that could be suitable for both military and civilian uses. We are currently working to divest 14 surplus defence properties that have potential for housing and that are not needed for National Defence operations.

Recognizing that we need better infrastructure to support an uptick in housing supply, our government has also revealed that the budget would feature a new $6-billion Canada housing infrastructure fund to help communities increase their housing supplies and to upgrade water, waste water, stormwater and solid waste infrastructure.

Because many Canadians rely on public transit to go to school, to get to work and to see their friends, budget 2024 also announces that any community seeking to access long-term predictable funding through the federal government's forthcoming permanent public transit funding would be required to take action that directly unlocks housing supply where it is needed most. Our focus as a government is on building more homes at a pace and a scale not seen in generations and on restoring fairness and affordability for every generation. We did it when soldiers returned home from the Second World War, and we can build homes like that again.

With this upcoming budget, we would make it easier for every Canadian, no matter who they are or where they come—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I apologize, but the hon. member is quite over time.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Trois-Rivières.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Madam Speaker, despite the good intentions of wanting to create health programs and build housing—all good things—I would like to know, on a scale of one to 10, what number best reflects the federal government's contempt for interfering in Quebec's jurisdictions.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, I do not think this government has any contempt for the province of Quebec. If anything, I think Quebec has been treated extremely well in this budget. There will be more homes built in the province of Quebec than have ever been built before, more assistance to the cities that have joined this program to build more homes, and more infrastructure dollars to build thousands more homes in Quebec.

I think the residents of Quebec are going to be overwhelmed with this budget and the number of homes it will be able to unlock in their jurisdiction to keep the costs of housing down.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Madam Speaker, as the hon. member knows, earlier today the opposition party asked the Speaker to grant an emergency debate on the issue related to drugs in the member's home province of British Columbia.

The government can schedule a debate on this issue if it chooses. Would the hon. member support not just an emergency debate, but a debate on the catastrophic drug issue going on in his home province?

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Madam Speaker, Conservative members are more than welcome to debate this topic in the budget debate as much as they want. When it comes to this particular topic, I think this was done at the request of the Vancouver Police Department, along with other police chiefs and the Province of British Columbia. This was their call and their request to decriminalize certain aspects, certain drugs in certain quantities. The federal government and the Minister of Health responded accordingly. They have now requested amendments, and our government will similarly respond to that based on the needs and requests of the people in the province of British Columbia.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the work I do with the member on the veterans committee, so my question is going to be around that issue.

We have done a report in this place around marriage after 60. We know that many veterans who find love after 60 cannot leave a pension for their survivors. We also know that in 2019, the government made an announcement saying there was $150 million it would be sharing with women who were already in that circumstance. There are many very impoverished women who looked after veterans during the hardest parts of their lives and got absolutely nothing upon their passing. I was saddened to see there was no mention of that in this budget.

When is the money from 2019 actually going out to these vulnerable women?