Housing, health care, affordability key focuses in federal budget

For the last few weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet ministers have been touring the country unveiling tidbits of what’s to come in the federal budget set to be unveiled Tuesday.

Making Canadians’ lives affordable will be a big part of it.

“We have things like $15 billion for an apartment construction loan program, $6 billion for housing infrastructure funds for cities, rental protections with $1.5 billion, a housing accelerator top-up of $400 million,” explained CityNews Parliament Hill Reporter Cormac Mac Sweeney.

“A Renter’s Bill of Rights, mortgage changes to allow more first-time homebuyers to enter the market and promises to work with provinces to increase housing availability — there’s a lot when it comes to the housing front.”

He says Ottawa is also looking to expand childcare spaces in provinces where $10 a day childcare exists. The federal government has also already promised a national school food program.

However, the federal government has said little about how it’s going to bring down high grocery prices. Mac Sweeney says it’s unclear if that will be addressed in the budget.

“Maybe tax breaks, other incentives that they could potentially offer new grocery chains to set up in Canada. The other big question mark on grocery prices is whether we could potentially see a windfall tax. It’s something the NDP and some labour groups have been calling for, saying certain corporations have made record profits … while Canadians have been suffering.”

However, there are concerns that levy could backfire.

“Business groups have said, ‘If you start taxing these corporations more, it will just trickle down into the price consumers pay.’ So, whether there are going to be any protections to prevent that from happening — it’s going to be hard to see that,” added Mac Sweeney.

Then there’s the health-care system, which is overwhelmed across the country.

“One thing we are waiting for is the money that will be set aside for Pharmacare. That’s going to be something that both the Liberals and the NDP negotiated as they try to roll out the Pharmacare plan starting with contraception and diabetes drugs and expanding from there.

“The goal, in the NDP’s eyes, is a for a national drug-buying program that would reduce costs of drugs for all Canadians, which over time, when Canadians aren’t worried about paying the bills to get the medicines they need, can help improve the overall functioning of our healthcare system.”

He also expects mental health initiatives to potentially see major investments.

Mac Sweeney says Canadians will likely also see money announced for AI and new tech that may be used to help tackle climate change, specifically wildfires. Last year, Canada saw a record-breaking wildfire season that scorched more than 18 million hectares of land.

There’s a lot to cover and Mac Sweeney adds the cost of all these promises could be quite steep.

“The price tag of this budget has been going up, and up and up and we still haven’t seen any added promises that they may have saved for budget day or how they’re going to pay for all this.”

He explains Ottawa may increase corporate tax rates or introduce a wealth tax on the country’s most wealthy individuals — not companies.

“Another way the government could potentially pay for all this is… cuts in other departments to help make room, but there could also be deferred spending. Let’s just say a program that had multi-year spending on the go, the government could maybe defer some of that spending, so instead of spending all that money over the next five years, they could decide in this budget to back-end some of that to help free up some more budgetary room in the short-term.”

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