Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak in the House this afternoon on something that really is a centrepiece of our government's policy moving forward: the budget. The budget is important to Canadians in so many ways, but, in particular, because it represents a strong and courageous change in direction from policies that the previous government undertook that would have the impact of making my children and grandchildren and everybody else's children and grandchildren across the country a whole lot weaker for many years.
We plan to invest over $180 billion in infrastructure over the next 11 years. So many of these expenses will directly touch upon my riding, such as social housing. The previous government, over the past 10 years, completely abandoned its responsibility in the area of social housing. I am privileged to sit in the House next to the member for Spadina—Fort York, who greatly inspired our platform and, therefore, greatly inspired the budget as it now stands. I really would like to pay homage to him.
He has an urban riding in Toronto, which is much like my urban riding in Montreal, and the housing needs are glaring, in particular, because of the federal government's abandonment of its responsibility 10 years ago. We need better social housing, we need to renew co-op agreements, which are very important in my riding. We need to have the money available for those co-op agreements to be renewed, and for those co-operative housing arrangements to reinvest in their own infrastructure, such that the buildings do not become dilapidated and continue to be vibrant communities moving forward.
My riding straddles the end of the city and the beginning of the suburbs, and there is the question of affordable housing as well. We need to be flexible to allow homeowners to repair their own homes and for landlords to repair their rental properties, particularly at the lower end of the rental scale, such that tenants will have a good stock of affordable housing. The fact that we have had the courage to say we will run deficits in order to improve our stock of social housing and infrastructure generally, I think, is an important change of direction.
There is also money in infrastructure for social innovation and technological innovation, two things that are very dear to my heart. I taught intellectual property for many years and have had to follow, for professional reasons, quite happily, I might add, the whole digital revolution. The world has changed immensely since I started teaching intellectual property in 1998. It has been unbelievable and the possibilities created for both economic advancement and the reshaping of society through the digital revolution are breathtaking.
I have, and I hope to have, social innovation projects accepted for my riding, as well as trying to bring some of the fruits of the digital revolution into my riding to create good middle-class jobs, but also to allow people to live closer to where they work and allow the community to thrive in that manner. It is a new generation where people do not necessarily want to commute for a long time in order to get to work. I hope I have the ideal riding for that possibility. By investing in infrastructure, particularly in these kinds of digital areas, we might be able to create those possibilities.
My riding is also blessed with two jewels, the St. Lawrence River and the Lachine Canal, both of which could profit greatly from investment in green infrastructure. The Lachine Canal is, for many reasons, so historically important in the history of Canada, in the development that occurred along that canal. Now we need to re-deploy the Lachine Canal as a recreational space. That requires infrastructure spending not just on the canal itself, such as the walls of the canal, and its development into a 12-month-a-year recreational facility, but also for decontamination.
All the lands in the southwest of Montreal are effectively contaminated because of their industrial history. Moving forward on any kind of project, whether around the Lachine Canal or whether a social housing project in Verdun or in Ville-Émard, we need to be thinking about funds for decontamination in order to make our infrastructure projects work.
Let me open with the following, because we are talking about the environment, and it is something that I feel needs to be said in the House as regards the price on carbon. People who speak out against a price on carbon seem to think they have a right to pollute. It used to be treated in the economics literature as an externality, something a property owner or business owner did not have to think about. It was external to his or her thinking. However, that kind of analysis is completely wrong. No one has the right to pollute. No one has the right not to consider these externalities of their own business activities. It is their responsibility precisely to consider the environmental impact of everything they do. It is part of the responsibility of being a property owner. It is part of the responsibility of being a business owner. I spent the better part of 20 years as a property theorist arguing just that. Therefore, it is not unjust to price carbon. In fact, it is equitable and just, and it is righting a historic wrong, whether in terms of analytical thinking or in terms of justice itself.
One of the most courageous things we are doing in this budget is the idea of an infrastructure bank. This is precisely in recognition of the fact that some of our infrastructure needs are so great that we need to turn to pools of investment capital in Canada and throughout the world to realize these kinds of projects.
There is a project currently being conceived in Montreal for a high-speed rail. Funding for that would come from Quebec's massive investment from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. This is the kind of project that the investment bank would target. They are projects that have some income stream that an investment fund or pension fund might want to invest in over the long term, with a stable and steady rate of return for its investors.
Why not tap into this? It makes possible all sorts of projects that will help my children and grandchildren move around the city of Montreal, should they choose to stay there, or anyone else. It really takes courage. We envisaged this in our platform, it was in our campaign booklet, and we are bringing this to reality. It is going to be fantastic.
Finally, I need to speak about the families in my riding, both the young and the old.
The Canada child benefit will help many families who live in my riding who are struggling to make ends meet. This non-taxable benefit, which is much more generous than the previous benefit, will certainly be an advantage over what we previously had, a miscellaneous mumbo-jumbo of tax credits and whatnot that was far less generous than our single, clear program.
When the future Prime Minister announced this in Montreal at the Olympic stadium, it was pointed out that the 70,000 seats in that stadium matched how many kids in Quebec would be raised out of poverty by this measure. I am proud to be part of that.
Finally, for the seniors in my riding, reducing the age for eligibility for benefits to 65, increasing the old age supplement, in addition to what we are doing in Bill C-26 on the CPP, means that our benefits for seniors are going to give them a dignified retirement. It will help, in particular, those who are really struggling, and believe me, I met many of them at the door.
There are measures in here to help veterans. There are measures in here as far as employment insurance goes. It would take another two or three days to recite these, but I am happy to conclude at this point by saying that this is a courageous budget. “Courage” is the word that characterizes it. We have had the courage to come forward to take these measures, put them in place for our kids and our grandkids, and I am proud to be part of it.
