Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in today's debate on the bill before us, the budget implementation bill. This budget aims to build, empower and protect Canada, as my friend the parliamentary secretary so aptly described.
It is really important to have the context of this budget bill in front of us clear. We have a hinge moment of rupture in our trading relationship with our major trading partner.
We go to our different constituencies on weekends to talk to our constituents and business owners. I was in touch just last night with the business owners of the Baby Point Gates Business Improvement Area. What is on their mind is this rupture moment and how Canada will respond. They are looking for leadership, frankly, from all parties to respond to this moment.
As my friend and fellow parliamentary secretary mentioned, this budget does a really good job of making the key investments that would help us with this transition and help us respond to this hinge moment and this rupture we are experiencing today. There are some concrete investments in the long term.
Some of those investments are in the people who have been asking for support for some time. They are the people who put themselves on the line for our sovereignty and our freedom. I am thinking in particular of one of the single biggest major investments in this budget, which is the salary increase for the women and men who serve in our armed forces. Past governments were not as attentive to this as they needed to be. Canadians and the armed forces have said they need to be invested in. They need to be the people who are trusted to continue to defend Canada, whether at home or abroad, with some real recognition and some real investment.
This budget makes a really significant and important commitment to those people. It was unfortunate to see our friends on the other side, who have often spoken about the value of the Canadian military and military service, vote against that, but it was very important that we put that in the budget.
There are also tax measures to support the people who have needed it the most. I want to refer to a couple of them. The personal support worker health care heroes tax credit is a really important commitment that was made by our party in our manifesto. We hear every day about the back-breaking physical labour, often done by women, immigrants and newcomers.
In my riding of Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, the Tibetan Canadian community, often trained in health care professions, works as personal support workers for Copernicus Lodge at the different health care sites. Some are in the riding and some very far from the riding. These are people who put everything on the line for the people they care about, their clients and their patients, who are the most vulnerable in our society, but they are vulnerable too. They often have to work two jobs and go between different places of work. It was especially important that we recognize them.
I think everyone in this House would have recognized that work during the pandemic. After the pandemic, it was too easy for too many to forget about the role of these health care heroes and the representation they got from their union. On this side, we heard the call. I am so pleased to see that in this budget bill, we honour the commitment to the health care heroes tax credit. I just met a couple of days ago with a couple of personal support workers, Vegeta and Ellen, who shared with us the back-breaking work they do and their desire and their need for support.
The tax measures are also for the job creators that bring economic growth to our nation.
The good news about some of these tax measures and investments is that when the money goes directly to the people, we know they are spending the money, so when we make an investment in our military and the lowest-paid members of our services, we know they are going to use that money to buy goods and services in their community.
Some of the tax measures to build Canada, as my friend, the parliamentary secretary mentioned, are for our job creators. I am thinking in particular of the refinements to the SR and ED tax credit. This is of major interest and major use to so many small and medium-sized businesses in our communities.
Recently I met a constituent, Brad McCabe, who told me that the tax credit, while good policy, was not working as well as it could be. It was taking too long for people to find out about this tax credit and whether they would be eligible. As a result, the investments Mr. McCabe was making in his business were not being recognized by the government.
We therefore made the proposed change in the budget bill to move to pre-approval so investors have the certainty of knowing that there would be a recognition of their investment with a tax credit. We also proposed compressing the timeline so people would be able to find out about and receive the money in a more timely fashion. It is an important tax measure in the budget to support Canadians.
There is another part of the budget bill I want to highlight that I think is important to many members in southern Ontario and Quebec. It has been much talked about, and now we have some government action that is starting to move the needle. I am talking about the measures in the budget bill around high-speed rail. We know that the Alto project is a very exciting project that Canadians have been talking about for decades. There are some really specific and concrete measures in the budget bill that would bring forward the work, along with the commitment to reduce the timelines around the assessment of the project from eight years to four years.
This is something that people throughout southern Ontario and Quebec have been looking for. They have been saying that it is a really key part of our growth and connectivity as a country. My hon. friend from Peterborough knows how important this is. We talk about it as a Toronto to Quebec City corridor, but there are major places along the way that could also stand to really benefit from it. In this moment when it is so easy to be divided and for Canadians to be pitted against each other, it is a very important measure that in the budget bill we have some investments that are intentionally about connecting Canadians.
As parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Industry, I cannot help but point out that there are some very important investments in science and research in the budget. Other countries are pulling back on science, and even in the general public there is a growing concern or fear that science is not something we should be trusting, that discovery-based research is something for someone else, and that the really important work of diversity, equity and inclusion in science and research is something to be rejected. When this is happening, I am really proud to be associated with a government that stands wholeheartedly in support of inquiry in the hard sciences, the life sciences and the social sciences and humanities.
The current budget is the second of two historic budgets for science and research work and its community and therefore for the economic benefit that will come from that. In our 2024 budget, we brought forward major investments in the three major granting councils. Those are the agencies that fund the research done by our professors, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, which in turn generates the life-saving and economic innovations we are all so lucky to benefit from.
In the current budget, there is a major new commitment around attracting international talent and identifying the best minds, the people who are looking to do science and are being told frankly in their country that it may not be the place for them to do science, that it is going to cut funding, that it does not like their political views or that what they are doing is political.
On our side of the aisle and in the budget, we very clearly recognize that work done in teams in pursuit of excellence and scientific inquiry is the kind of work we want to do in Canada. The budget makes a major investment in this, and we are looking for Canadians in Canada and people all around the world to be looking forward to this international talent attraction strategy. I am so proud to be associated with it.
I was at the Canadian Science Policy Conference last year, and the academic community from coast to coast in Canada has been raving about how well supported it feels. Its members are feeling more patriotic than ever, and they know that when we invest in science and research and in open-ended inquiry in the hard sciences, the life sciences and the social sciences and humanities, it is not just about the research; it is actually about sovereignty and freedom for Canada. They depend on a certain level of sovereignty and freedom to do their work, and in turn they generate sovereignty, freedom and economic benefit for all of us.
These are just some of the benefits of the budget that I am proud to point out today, and I look forward to questions and comments.