Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland presented the 300-page federal budget on April 7, but what is in it for Sea to Sky residents?
We are assuming you didn't get around to reading the whole thing, so we caught up with West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country MP Patrick Weiler to ask him about what locals should watch for in the budget.
What follows is a version of that conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.
What are some items in the 2022 budget that you think Sea to Sky folks may have glossed over?
Probably the challenge that we face, more than anything else, is really the housing crisis.
There is a very significant investment in this budget, about $10 billion, going into tackling a number of different aspects of the problem.
One of the biggest ones is the lack of supply.
We are creating a new program — the Housing Accelerator Fund, which will support municipalities to have additional capacity to bring on more supply.
That may be a little bit less of an issue in Squamish because there has been a lot of supply that's come on in recent years.
We're also creating a new Tax-Free First Home Savings Account, which is going to operate like a TFSA and allow people to save up for their first home.
So that will help a lot of people trying to get into the market.
We're also supporting more non-market housing through the biggest investment in co-operatives in 30 years, through putting more money into the rapid housing initiatives for supportive housing, and a few other new programs that we're rolling out.
We're bringing a two-year ban on new foreign non-resident ownership. We're going to be taxing assignments and property flipping. And we're supporting a beneficial ownership program, as well, so that we know who's going to be behind a lot of these purchases and making sure we can tackle money laundering.
But the cost of housing here is still so far out of range because of the significant increase in Sea to Sky housing prices. Can you address that?
I think certainly with interest rates going up, that will tamp down on prices a little bit. But each of these measures will do a little bit to kind of tamp down on the speculation that's there, as well as, especially for first-time homebuyers, to give them that little leg up to be able to afford their first home as well.
Folks are concerned about inflation, so how does the budget address that?
That's why it's important that we're on a very strong fiscal track. And a lot of the things that we are seeing are going to subside, again, with interest rates going up. And with some of these supply chain disruptions relenting a little bit.
Our inflation is significantly less, for instance than what's happening in the United States. Right now, our inflation is below the Group of Seven (G7) average. But these are very much global forces that are driving it. It's not a matter of federal government spending that's driving it.
What about reconciliation items in the budget?
The big one is probably also on housing. There's a massive investment in housing for Metis, First Nations, Inuit, as well as self-governing nations, as well. There are a number of different programs that we're supporting as well as some funding to be able to meet our legal commitments on childcare and health care for Indigenous peoples as well.
What about more funding for searching the grounds of former residential schools for graves?
That work was actually supported through last year's budget as well. And there has been a significant demand from First Nations right across the country for that, and so we provided some additional funding within the budget this year to be able to make sure that we're going to do what we need to do to support First Nations to get to the truth before we can get to reconciliation.
What else should locals note in the budget, in your view?
I think people probably would have caught the new dental care programs that we're running, but there's additional funding in this budget to build new childcare infrastructure. So that's very helpful. The opioid crisis is a huge issue, so there's funding for safe supply projects — an additional $100 million for that.
On the business side, we're making it easier for small businesses to grow because we're going to be phasing out the small business tax rates, such that you don't go from 9% to 15% when you reach $50 million in revenue.
And something that will be very important through the Sea to Sky is the funding that we have going towards tackling the backlogs in our immigration system and improving the temporary foreign workers' program.
That doesn't apply as much in Squamish, but in Whistler, that's a big concern. What else is in the budget that will help specifically Squamish folks?
We're investing about $28 billion altogether in climate and clean economic measures. It has significant new investments in electric vehicle charging infrastructure and we're extending its incentive programs for zero-emissions vehicles.
There are some very B.C. environmental programs that are in this budget such as the new Old Growth Nature fund that will allow us to work with the province and the private sector to protect some of our last intact, remaining growth in B.C.
We are recapitalizing the Oceans Protection Plan with another $2 billion to be able to protect our aquatics areas as well as continue to make our shipping sector much safer. As well as some very significant investments in wildfire mitigation, supporting the hiring of another 1,000 firefighters, as well as investing in new equipment to fight forest fires, and working with Indigenous peoples on some traditional practices for mitigating.
With the climate investments, though, you aren't putting that money into renewables. It is still going into fossil fuels. The feds just approved the Bay du Nord offshore oil megaproject in Nova Scotia. So maybe those initiatives you mentioned are great, but overall, we're still putting too much into fossil fuel-type projects, no?
We're not actually investing in fossil fuel exploration or extraction and actually, in this budget, we've eliminated the flow-through share program that was probably the biggest fossil fuel subsidies that were left. But we are investing in carbon capture and storage. And given that the fossil fuel sector is the most significant source of our emissions, that's the most direct way we can reduce them in the near term, right. And that's not just going to support fossil or that's just not going to just reduce emissions from fossil fuel companies, it's also going to allow us to completely eliminate emissions from things like steel and cement, which are also huge sources of emissions. And it'll be very key for Squamish, because the biggest tax credit is for direct air capture. And obviously, we have the leader in direct air capture in the world in Carbon Engineering.
And one thing I would say about Bay du Nord is it was at the same time that project was approved, we actually disapproved a Suncor project in the oil sands. And I think that didn't really make any news. And the Bay Du Nord project will have 10 times less emissions per barrel of oil than the average barrel of oil that's produced in the oil sands.
And we're going to be bringing in a cap on the amount of emissions that can be produced by that sector, such that it won't, well, it's not going to surpass what it is right now. And it will steadily decline in five-year increments, to make sure we're able to meet our targets and actually exceed them.
But to challenge you on the electric car incentives, what the auto manufacturers were asking for, is for the rebate to be more — $15,000 per buyer up from $5,000 to actually get more people buying them to get where we need to be. Why not do that?
What we committed to in this budget was to provide new funding for incentives, the exact amount that those incentives could always change over time. And the price of a car where you'll be eligible for rebates, we've signalled that that may go up.
But one of the areas that we did mention is just support for medium and heavy-duty, electrification. And that's really important as well because when we start to see electric trucks roll out, they won't be eligible under our existing programs. And there's going to be a gap there that we'll need to address. So, that's one of the next areas that, as we go forward, even in a couple of years, electric vehicles are going to be at the same price as internal combustion engines. And it's just really a matter of getting to economies of scale. And we're very, very quickly getting there.
Side issue, but the U.S. has federal gas reserves, shouldn't Canada develop its own Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cushion consumers during supply shocks?
Well, I mean, the U.S. has strategic reserves of gas and oil, but it hasn't kept prices down there. Because the fact of the matter is, it is a global market, right. And so when you have a disruption and what's happening with the invasion of Ukraine, even though we're halfway across the world that's impacted gas prices here.
And when we're thinking about inflation here, as OPEC is able to bring up production, which takes several months to do, gas prices are going to come down. But it just takes a little while to do that because you can't just turn a switch on or off to make that happen.
Turning to Ukraine, the defence spending in the budget was $8 billion, which sounds like a lot. But when you compare it to places like Germany, which is spending $113 billion on defence, Can you speak to that?
There are two things here. There's the increase in defence spending, which was quite significant. It's one of our biggest increases in spending, ever in a budget. And, so that's very, very significant to make sure that we're keeping Canadians safe, as well as doing our part as a NATO ally. And, we have Canadian troops on the ground in Eastern Europe to support our allies there already. And we've been doing a tremendous amount of work to support people in Ukraine, as well as Ukrainians coming to Canada. So there is additional money in this budget to provide for sovereign loans and support to Ukraine, as well as for military procurement. So that is very, very much necessary. And it's because we have such close ties with Ukrainians. Canada has the second biggest diaspora of Ukrainian nationals in the world.
Thanks for your time. Was there anything I didn't ask about that you want to say?
The other areas is just the big focus on innovation, as well, including the Canada Growth Fund. I think that's the other area that was really highlighted — that we do need to do better on productivity and growth. And so we're investing in some of the main growth areas of our economy, as well as creating a new $15 billion fund to be able to match with private investment to bring some of those good jobs and private sector investment that we really need to see in this country.
