Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege to speak to this House about Bill C-86, which represents our government's next steps to advance the mandate given to us by Canadians.
In 2015, Canadians sent us to Ottawa on a promise to grow the economy, support Canada's middle class and most vulnerable, and build a more inclusive and prosperous nation for all Canadians. Over the last three years, our government has made great progress on this promise.
Across the country, a strong and growing middle class is driving economic growth, and creating new jobs and more opportunities for people to succeed. While there is still more work to be done to ensure that every Canadian has a fair chance at success, real progress has been made. More Canadians are working, wages are growing, and Canadians and business are confident in their future.
The Canada child benefit, CCB, is helping families with the high cost of raising children by putting more money in the pockets of nine out of 10 families, helping to lift 521,000 people, including nearly 300,000 children, out of poverty. It is a measure that is making a real difference in Halifax.
This summer, I was at Mulgrave Park in our city's north end. It is a vibrant public housing community where many families benefit from the CCB. In a conversation with the executive director of Mulgrave Park Caring and Learning Centre, Crystal John, I asked her what she had been hearing from families about how the CCB is helping them. She told me that one important way to help is by giving families the funds to purchase nutritious meals for children. We know that food is expensive and that healthy food is even more expensive. Therefore, ensuring children are well fed, receiving the nutrients they need from healthy food, with fresh fruits and vegetables, is critically important. This is the positive impact of the CCB on the ground in Halifax and across the country.
Of course, more than nine million Canadians are also benefiting from the government's middle-class tax cut. By this time next year, a typical middle-class family of four will receive on average $2,000 more each year as a result of these two measures to help with the cost of raising their children and saving for their future. This will help grow the economy for the benefit of everyone. We have also enhanced the Canada pension plan, which will provide more Canadians with a secure retirement.
We have made historic investments in infrastructure, including the national housing strategy, which is helping Canadians with a secure, safe and affordable place to call home. I will say that, as a former city planner, this is a point of great pride for me. Secure and affordable housing is fundamental to a citizen's well-being. We have taken important steps to create a strategy that is smart, focused on the vulnerable and rights-based. Now, Canada's strong fiscal position, which includes the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, allows the government to continue investing in the middle class and to lay a solid foundation for future generations.
In November, the Minister of Finance presented the federal government's 2018 fall economic statement, and here are some of the measures that it included.
First, the government is taking action to help Canadian businesses to compete, succeed and create good, well-paying jobs. We are introducing new tax incentives that will support business investment in Canada, including allowing businesses to immediately write off the full cost of machinery and equipment used for the manufacturing or processing of goods. We are also cutting red tape to make it easier to do business in Canada while protecting Canadians' health, safety and the environment.
The fall economic statement also makes important investments in a new social finance fund. The government recognizes that innovative approaches are needed to tackle persistent and complex social challenges that make it difficult for some Canadians to succeed and reach their full potential. To encourage and realize innovative ideas, the Government of Canada is creating a new social finance fund to allow potential investors to partner with charities, non-profit and social purpose organizations to work together to solve our country's biggest social challenges. We are also providing support to social purpose organizations to improve their ability to successfully participate in the social finance market. All told, the social finance fund is expected to help create thousands of jobs, foster economic growth and help us build a more equal and fair Canada.
In Halifax, we are so lucky to have a vibrant community of passionate people working in the social innovation field. Just last week, I had the opportunity to invite the Minister of Innovation to Halifax for a reception at Common Good Solutions, an incubator and consulting agency that helps social enterprises start and grow. Its fearless leader, David Upton, has been a strong voice for government support for social enterprises, and I have been proud to stand along with him. In speaking with him since last week, he is thrilled with what the new social finance fund will mean for this growing industry.
One more important update in the fall economic statement is support for Canadian journalism. A strong and independent news media is crucial to a well-functioning democracy. The government recognizes the vital role that journalism plays in communities across Canada and is making key investments to ensure that Canadians in underserved communities continue to have access to informed and reliable news coverage.
New measures include allowing non-profit news organizations to receive charitable donations and issue official donation receipts; introducing a new refundable tax credit that supports original news content creation, including local news; and introducing a new temporary, non-refundable tax credit for subscriptions to Canadian digital news media.
There is still more work to do but the progress we have made to date is extraordinary and we are not slowing down. We will continue to fight for Canada's middle class and vulnerable Canadians. The budget elements included in Bill C-86 will go a long way to help us realize this goal. I encourage all members to support it.
I am going to share a few more excellent points about the budget bill and I am sure that everyone in the House will be interested in hearing them.
Members have heard me say before that Nova Scotia is home to some of the brightest scientists and researchers in the world at leading research institutions like Dalhousie University, St. Mary's University, the Bedford Institution of Oceanography and the IWK, the Izaak Walton Killam Children's Hospital and more. For the last year, they have rallied around the recommendations of the Fundamental Science Review, also known as the Naylor report, which was commissioned by this government under the leadership of our Minister of Science and Sport. This report called for significant investment in investigator-led research.
Our government agreed with those calls for action, because research expands our understanding of how the world works, allowing us to address existing and emerging challenges in our region in new and effective ways.
Equally important, basic research also serves as the foundation for the knowledge-based economy. That is why budget 2018 includes the single largest investment in investigator-led fundamental research ever. That is $4 billion for fundamental science and research infrastructure and it includes a 25% increase to funding of the tri-council of NSERC, CIHR and SSHRC.
We have said it before, science is back, but more than that, with budget 2018 it is unstoppable.
The final measure I want to highlight is conservation, and this is a topic that many of my constituents in Halifax care deeply about. A whopping $1.3 billion to protect Canada's landscapes and biodiversity, including species at risk, is included in the budget. It also includes funding to protect endangered marine life such as the right whale.
These measures are joined by several others that are geared toward protecting our environment for generations to come, including funding for the implementation of Canada's pricing of pollution system.
There is $56 million to expand an existing home energy retrofit partnership with efficiency in Nova Scotia.
One of my favourite measures is making entry to Canada's national parks free for kids forever.
These are the kinds of investments that will keep Canada on a path to prosperity along with others that I mentioned in my speech today and countless additional initiatives from budget 2018 that I did not have time to address.
I hope that my colleagues from all corners of this place will agree that this plan is working for Canadians and that they will vote for this budget implementation measure to keep this spectacular momentum going.
