Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to speak this afternoon in support of this budget, a tremendous economic action plan for Canada, a great action plan, very timely and something that I think is roundly celebrated by Canadians east to west and north to south.
On December 22, I had the honour of hosting an economic round table in Peterborough and I had a number of local stakeholders come in and make specific recommendations on things that they would like to see in our budget. A number of the recommendations were not just outstanding recommendations that were incorporated in this budget, but they demonstrated that our finance minister and our Prime Minister were listening when we were handing in reports from everyday Canadians and incorporating those suggestions right into the budget.
I just want to refer to some of the suggestions that I heard.
Bryan Cathcart from Cathcart Trucking came forward and spoke on behalf of small business. He recommended reductions in small business taxes. I refer to the budget brief and I look at supporting small business. I look at, for example, increasing the amount of small business income eligible for a reduced federal tax rate by 11% to $500,000 from the current limit of $400,000. This is real money back into the pockets of small business so they can employ people, continue to be prosperous and invest in our communities.
Increasing access to credit was mentioned by a number of people who were there, including Jay Amer from the GPAEDC who spoke about our small businesses having a difficult time getting the credit they needed to conduct and grow their business. We look, for example, at the Canada small business financing program and the Business Development Bank of Canada, those extensions that we made specifically in this budget tremendously improved their ability to support small business. We see that once again that on this issue the government was really listening.
We had seniors' representatives there as well. Ralph de Groot, who is a retired superintendent of the RCMP, came forward and made specific recommendations with respect to the tax burden that seniors are facing in Canada and talked to us about how we might be able to help seniors so that they can meet their bill commitments and live the way they have become accustomed. We see in this budget that one of the major moves is to increase the age credit by an additional $1,000. Our government increased the age credit from $1,000 to $2,000 in budget 2006 and now we have increased it by another $1,000 effective in 2009.
What does this mean? How will this benefit seniors? What did Mr. de Groot's advocacy win for seniors? This benefit will benefit 2.2 million seniors who will now be eligible to receive up to $961 in annual tax savings. That is a lot of money for seniors in my community and that money will help them. In effect, $961 is what many of them make in any given month.
We have already introduced pension income splitting, something that was incredibly popular among seniors in my riding. We also changed the age limit from 69 to 71 on RRSPs. We further reduced the mandatory amount that must be withdrawn when converting RRSPs to RRIFs, something that seniors have been really concerned about, especially given the decline in the market. They wanted to be able to leave their money in and we are allowing them to do that. Once again, the concerns brought forward by Ralph de Groot were listened to in our budget.
The Peterborough Real Estate Association came forward. Barb Criegern and Carolyn Mills talked about the need for the government to assist homeowners and to assist real estate through what could be a difficult time. They talked about retrofit programs. Obviously the new home renovation tax credit, which this government brought forward, is something I am immensely proud of.
We now have a program where Canadians can improve their homes: green retrofits, improvements to their kitchens, maybe they have a new addition to the family so they need to renovate a bedroom, or maybe they want to finish a basement. For all of these things the government will now play a part, if they make that investment soon.
Those things will stimulate our economy because we know those inputs, whether it is lumber or drywall, are all made in Canada, which is a real stimulus to the economy. At the same time, the government will have a hand in helping everyday Canadians pay for renovations on their homes, to update their homes, to make them more efficient, to make them greener and to make them much nicer.
We have a lot of old housing stock in a city like Peterborough. This will help us retrofit those homes and really assist those homeowners.
They talked to me about the ability to leverage the RRSP investments toward the purchase of a home. That was specifically mentioned in the budget. One used to be able to take $20,000 of one's RRSP and draw that down to put toward a down payment on a home. For years, the Real Estate Association has been coming forward asking for it to be indexed and moved to $25,000. There is a specific member of our caucus who has worked very hard on that. That indexing is in the budget. This will help people buy homes and it is something that is roundly celebrated by real estate agents from coast to coast.
We now have the first-time home buyer's tax credit. Barb Criegern and Carolyn Mills of the Peterborough Real Estate Board talked at length about how we could assist first-time home buyers. That is a big market and it has the ability to really keep homes moving. If we can continue to assist people to move from rental to ownership, especially at this time of historically low interest rates, anything we could do in that regard would certainly be helpful.
The new tax credit of $5,000 tax credit with a net value to them of $750 is in the budget. This is the government helping first-time home buyers to enter into the real estate market at a time when we need people entering into the housing market so we can keep the economy rolling.
Judy Heffernan of the Peterborough Community Futures Development Corporation and Jay Amer talked to me specifically about the eastern Ontario development program. They had a recommendation to double the funding of that program because it had leveraged so much support and created so many jobs. That was a $10 million-a-year program. They were advocating to take that from $10 million and move it to $20 million. Our government did substantially more than that.
We have created the new southern Ontario development agency. That is a $1 billion investment over five years, and it is about time. Regional economic development has existed from coast to coast to coast but not in southern Ontario. It has been an item of fairness for us. We looked at it and thought about how much more investment we could leverage and how many more jobs we could create in southern Ontario if we had a fund like this. They were looking for another $10 million, but they received $200 million per year. We outdid their expectations by about 20 times.
However, that is not all we did. We also re-extended the eastern Ontario development program, so that $10 million fund is still in place for the next two years. We have the new SODA program, the southern Ontario development agency. That is going to create jobs and investments. We still have the eastern Ontario development program and that will be administered by the CFDC in Peterborough, Judy Heffernan and her associates, who do a tremendous job in attracting investment and creating jobs in Peterborough.
The president of Sir Sandford Fleming College, Tony Tilly, came to talk to me about a new skilled trades centre of excellence that the college would like to build. However, it really has a difficult time accessing the money that it needs to build the infrastructure. I have had conversations with the presidents of Brock University and the University of Windsor. I know the member for St. Catharines is here, a real advocate for Brock University.
What have we been able to create in the budget? What have we been able to lobby for? We did not only invest billions of new dollars in infrastructure, and that should never be diminished. We also created a new $2 billion fund for post-secondary institutions and that $2 billion will build the facilities that will create the great minds of tomorrow. This new skilled trades centre for Sir Sandford Fleming College will train the tradesmen of tomorrow. This is going to build the strong economy that Canada is going to need.
I could talk about this budget for hours because there is so much in it that is good for my community and every community from coast to coast to coast. However, I see that my time is up, but I appreciate the opportunity to speak in emphatic support of this great budget.
