Dear Oakville Friends and Neighbours,
On April 19th, our government tabled Budget 2021: A Recovery Plan for Jobs, Growth, and Resilience by Canada's 40th Minister of Finance and first female to hold the position, the Hon. Chrystia Freeland.
This budget is about finishing the fight against COVID-19. It’s about healing the wounds left by the COVID-19 recession. And it’s about creating more jobs and prosperity for Canadians in the days—and decades—to come.
Budget 2021 is an historic investment to address the specific wounds of the COVID-19 recession, put people first, create jobs, grow the middle class, set businesses on a track for long-term growth, and ensure that Canada’s future will be healthier, more equitable, greener, and more prosperous.
Our Government’s top priority remains protecting Canadians’ health and safety, particularly during this third, aggressive wave of the virus and its variants. Our vaccine rollout is well underway across Canada, and our government continues to deliver millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses, each week, to provinces and territories for administration. Budget 2021 invests in Canada’s bio-manufacturing and life sciences sector to rebuild domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity, and has a plan to improve long-term care and mental health services.
We are committed to providing Canadians and Canadian businesses with the support they need to get through this third-wave, and to come roaring back when the economy fully reopens. The COVID-19 recession is the steepest and fastest economic contraction since the Great Depression. It has disproportionately affected low-wage workers, young people, women, and racialized Canadians. For businesses, it has been a two-speed recession, with some finding ways to prosper and grow, but many businesses—especially small businesses—fighting to survive.
Budget 2021 provides funding to ensure lost jobs are recovered as swiftly as possible, and that hard-hit businesses can rebound quickly and have the tools to flourish. This budget will: support up to 500,000 new training and work opportunities, including 215,000 opportunities for youth; support businesses in our most affected sectors such as tourism and arts and culture; and accelerate investment in digital transformation of small and medium-sized businesses. Our government will continue to provide Canadians and Canadian businesses with the support they need - right now - by extending income support measures to this fall. Additionally we will invest in our economy to create jobs and help businesses across our country bounce back, beginning with our commitment to create 1 million jobs in 2021.
Budget 2021 also includes a transformative investment to build a Canada-wide early learning and childcare system. This is a plan to drive economic growth, a plan to increase women’s participation in the workforce, and a plan to offer each child in Canada the best start in life. This plan will aim to reduce fees for parents with children in regulated childcare by 50 percent on average, by 2022, to reach $10 per day on average by 2026, everywhere outside of Quebec. We will invest almost $30 billion over the next five years and provide permanent ongoing funding moving forward.
Looking beyond this trying time, Canadians deserve a future that is healthier, more equitable, greener and more prosperous. Budget 2021 includes a plan for a green recovery that fights climate change, helps more than 200,000 Canadians make their homes greener, builds a net-zero economy by investing in world-leading technologies that make industry cleaner and reduces pollution, helps Canada reach its goal of conserving 25 per cent of our lands and oceans by 2025, and creates good middle-class jobs in the green economy along the way. We are investing in Canada's green transition and the green jobs that go with it; in Canada's digital transformation and Canadian innovation; and in building infrastructure for a dynamic, growing country.
Canada entered the COVID-19 pandemic in a strong fiscal position. This allowed our government to take quick and decisive action, supporting people and businesses, and to make today’s historic investments in the recovery. The greatest danger to our economy would have been not doing enough; strong fiscal support is necessary to prevent economic scarring and to ensure that Canada’s recovery leaves no one behind.
Budget 2021 is a prudent plan that sets out a new fiscal anchor that is committed to reducing the federal debt as a share of the economy over the medium-term and unwinding COVID-19-related deficits. We will continue to put people first, create jobs, grow the middle class, set businesses on a track for long-term growth, and ensure that Canada’s future will be healthier, more equitable, greener, and more prosperous.
For more information on Budget 2021, please visit Canada.ca/budget. My constituency office also remains available at 905-338-2008 or [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely yours,
Hon. Anita Anand, Member of Parliament, Oakville
