FINA Committee Report

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT OF THE NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF CANADA

The federal budget is a key economic measure with profound impacts on all Canadians, and we believe broad input is essential for its success.

Throughout its consultations, the Committee repeatedly heard that Canada faces several critical and overlapping crises that require immediate action from the federal government. These include:

• Cost-of-living: The cost-of-living crisis continues to escalate, leaving millions of Canadians struggling to make ends meet. The cost of essentials such as rent and food have increased by over 21 percent and 20 percent, respectively, over the last three years. Fifty percent of Canadians are now living paycheque-to-paycheque, and one-in-four parents have cut back on their own food consumption to ensure their children had enough to eat in the past year.  The rising costs of staples such as home heating, telecommunications, and transportation are further straining household budgets, making it increasingly difficult for families to save for the future or handle unexpected expenses.

• Housing: Eight-in-ten Canadians now believe that owning a home in Canada is only for the rich. Among those who do not own a home, over seven-in-ten have given up on ever owning one. This was entirely predictable.

• Over the past 30 years, Canada has stopped investing in non-market housing under successive Liberal and Conservative governments. As a result, only 3.5 percent of Canada's housing stock is currently non-market housing, half the OECD average. Instead, in major cities across Canada tenants are regularly paying well over 50 percent of their income on shelter, a crippling and unsustainable burden.

• Moreover, housing across Canada is increasingly being treated as a commodity for investment rather than a place to call home. Investment firms have been purchasing rental buildings, then raising rents dramatically and forcing out existing tenants. Approximately one-third of all seniors’ housing in Canada has been financialized, along with some 30 percent of purpose-built rental buildings.

• Inequality: Income inequality in Canada has hit the highest level ever recorded. The top 20 percent of Canadians hold more than two-thirds of the country's wealth, averaging $3.4 million per household. By comparison, the bottom 40 percent of Canadians account for only 2.8 per cent of our country’s wealth. Fair taxation is essential to reducing income inequality and funding vital social programs. However, the top 5 percent of income earners paid a lower overall tax rate in 2022 than the bottom 95 percent – with the top 1 percent paying an even lower rate.

• Healthcare: After decades of federal underfunding, Canada’s healthcare system is under serious strain, with long wait times, inadequate access to essential services, and high levels of burnout among healthcare workers. Millions of Canadians do not have a family doctor, an essential pre-condition to accessing our healthcare system. Thousands of Canadians continue to be harmed by the toxic drug crisis, without adequate access to publicly funded treatment facilities and other life-saving services. Canada is also facing a serious mental healthcare shortage, with many Canadians reporting that their needs are not being met. Wait times for mental health services are especially long for children and youth.

• Climate Emergency: The urgency of climate action cannot be overstated. By 2025, the previous 10 years of climate change will have reduced Canada’s GDP by an estimated $25 billion. Without concerted action, by 2030 GDP will be an estimated $35 billion lower than it would have been otherwise, and by 2055 it will be an estimated $80 to $103 billion lower.  Moreover, when governments are forced to cover the costs of climate change by rebuilding damaged infrastructure, paying for increased healthcare costs, and fixing damages from weather-related disasters, capital is diverted from activities that would drive additional growth, rather than rebuilding what was already in place.

• Reconciliation: Advancing Indigenous reconciliation is both a moral and economic imperative. This includes increasing funding for education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure, and clean water in Indigenous communities, supporting Indigenous land rights and self-governance, and implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls to action and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ calls for justice.

• According to a recent report from the Assembly of First Nations and Indigenous Services Canada, it will cost $349 billion to close the infrastructure gap by 2030. However, the report also found that closing this infrastructure gap could generate $635 billion in economic output over the next seven years.

• Employment: Canada’s unemployment rate has risen at a rapid pace throughout 2024, but almost exclusively for young adults. Youth unemployment hit 14.5 percent in August, the highest level since 2012 outside the COVID-19 pandemic. Some 1 million Canadians under 29 are without jobs or training – an issue of intergenerational inequity that Deloitte estimates will cost our economy $18.5 billion over the next decade.

• Productivity: Enhancing productivity is vital for economic growth and competitiveness.However, spending on machinery and equipment by businesses, and on research, development, and innovation, has been falling as a share of Canada’s GDP for decades, despite the large corporate tax cuts introduced at the turn of the century. With rapid job-creation and population growth, business capital investment has not kept up.

New Democrats believe that these crises demand urgent and comprehensive action in Budget 2025 to ensure a prosperous, fair, and sustainable future for all Canadians.

We were pleased that the Committee included many NDP recommendations in its final consultation report. However, in our view the Committee failed to include a number of important recommendations advanced by stakeholders.

Accordingly, we respectfully propose the following list of supplementary recommendations for Budget 2025.

The NDP recommends that the Government of Canada, in accordance with the powers of each jurisdiction:

Recommendation 1

Implement the necessary legislation and regulations to align Canada’s financial system with the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.[1]

Recommendation 2

Accelerate and expand the Canada Public Transit Fund.[2]

Recommendation 3

Create a windfall profit tax on large corporations.[3]

Recommendation 4

Implement a windfall tax on oil and gas profits.[4]

Recommendation 5

Address alarming levels of child food insecurity across Canada by accelerating rollout of Budget 2024 commitment of $1 billion to create a National School Food Program, which is currently backloaded.[5]

Recommendation 6

Negotiate agreements with Indigenous leaders for the creation and/or enhancement of independent, distinctions-based First Nation, Métis, and Inuit school meal programs, with long-term and sustainable funding.[6]

Recommendation 7

Implement a Groceries and Essentials Benefit to support Canadians, administered via the existing GST/HST rebate to provide targeted relief to households with low incomes.[7]

Recommendation 8

Deliver immediate funding for mental health services under the Canada Mental Health Transfer, with an initial investment of $4.5 billion over 5 years.[8]

Recommendation 9

Establish an advisory body of impacted communities to assist in the design and implementation of withdrawal management and treatment services through a one-time $5 million fund.[9]

Recommendation 10

Tie federal health care funding to minimum standards for nurse-patient ratios and limits on consecutive work hours for nurses.[10]

Recommendation 11

Enact a federal Patient Bill of Rights.[11]

Recommendation 12

Address the nursing shortage though investing $1 billion to implement the Nursing Retention Toolkit.[12]

Recommendation 13

Introduce a $5000 Canadian Nurses Tax Credit to be modelled after the Volunteer Firefighter’s Tax Credit.[13]

Recommendation 14

Increase the federal share of health care funding and tie the money to national standards.[14]

Recommendation 15

Implement long-term care legislation with mandatory national standards of care.[15]

Recommendation 16

Provide federal funding for the expansion of non-profit, public, and Indigenous-led child care services, including implementing a comprehensive workforce strategy in the childcare sector.[16]

Recommendation 17

Allocate annual funding for the IAFF’s Core Capabilities Emergency Management Program (CCEMP) to provide emergency response agencies tools to strengthen collaborations and resiliency specific to disaster preparedness and response.[17]

Recommendation 18

Initiate a National Fire Administration in partnership with Canada’s Fire Chiefs as the nucleus of any future disaster/emergency management organization.[18]

Recommendation 19

Ensure universal access to affordable wireless and broadband internet plans for all Canadians.[19]

Recommendation 20

Expand the student loan forgiveness program to cover all who choose to pursue a career in Early Childhood Education.[20]

Recommendation 21

Develop a recruitment and retention strategy in the child care sector that addresses fair wages, pensions and working conditions coupled with a matching funding commitment.[21]

Recommendation 22

Develop a comprehensive funding program for VIA Rail to support expanded public passenger rail services in Canada, owned and operated by public entities and governed under a VIA Rail Act.[22]

Recommendation 23

End the REIT exemption to discourage the financialization of housing.[23]

Recommendation 24

Renew and expand on the Enhanced Nature Legacy and Marine Conservation Targets Funding to continue Canada’s leadership on nature protection.[24]

Recommendation 25

Establish a permanent, high-level Office of Environmental Justice, to ensure that environmental protection programs, policies, investments and laws account for community and population-level inequities and advance environmental justice.[25]

Recommendation 26

Enhance the First Nations Policing Program to establish new forces, achieve equity with federal services, provide wrap-around and culturally reflective services, and transition to legislation recognizing First Nations jurisdiction over policing.[26]

Recommendation 27

Provide new investments to support the federal mandate to develop and implement an Indigenous Justice Strategy, including revitalizing First Nations laws and legal systems and parallel reform of Canada’s legal system and legislation.[27]

Recommendation 28

Provide capital investments to build, replace, repair, and expand First Nations schools and teacherages to eliminate overcrowding.[28]

Recommendation 29

Invest across the drinking water supply chain to eliminate drinking water advisories in First Nations communities.[29]

Recommendation 30

Address First Nations’ housing issues including overcrowding, unit replacement, new lot servicing, repair, on-reserve migration, and meeting Accessible Canada Act requirements through accessibility retrofits.[30]

Recommendation 31

Invest in the Métis Nation through a co-developed, distinctions-based approach.[31]

Recommendation 32

Transition to open work permits for migrant workers.[32]

Recommendation 33

Equip researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs with the resources and support they need to boost productivity growth in Canada by:

• implementing Budget 2024 funding commitments to graduate students and core federal research through the granting councils over the next five years and beyond;
• investing in mission-driven research and innovation endeavours of high opportunity for Canada to drive new areas of economic growth;
• supporting a strong pipeline to move more academic discoveries into industry and the marketplace; and
• investing in digital research infrastructure.[33]

Recommendation 34

Establish a non-profit unit within federal government to provide long-term planning for the non-profit sector in Canada.[34]

Recommendation 35

Make residents of Haida Gwaii eligible for the full Northern Resident’s Tax Deduction.

Recommendation 36

Work collaboratively with pilot representatives to enact effective flight time/duty time regulations to ensure the safety of passengers and flight crews.[35]

Recommendation 37

Update the Canadian Aviation Regulations to require a minimum of at least two pilots on the flight deck for all commercial aviation operations to ensure the safety of passengers and flight crews.[36]

Recommendation 38

Establish a Crown Corporation to connect rural communities and urban centers through regularly scheduled bus service.

Recommendation 39

Immediately allocate the $4 billion to the National Indigenous Collaborative Housing Inc. (NICHI) for Urban/Rural Indigenous Housing currently held by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.[37]

Recommendation 40

Establish a national Indigenous program with $50 million annual funding for pre-development funds to mobilize Urban/Rural Indigenous communities, giving them an opportunity to acquire land and ensure projects are shovel ready.[38]

Recommendation 41

Provide long-term national funding for NICHI to:

• do the work necessary to engage and be a meaningful voice of Urban/Rural Indigenous Housing Providers across Canada;
• perform research on Indigenous housing in urban rural and northern areas; and
• support Urban Indigenous Communities to bring service providers together to create holistic housing plans.[39]

Recommendation 42

Reintroduce a robust Social Housing Program similar to the one established under Section 56.1 of the National Housing Act (including the provisions of Section 95).[40]

Recommendation 43

Provide funding for new a home ownership program to be developed by Urban/Rural Indigenous housing providers who will deliver that program through NICHI.[41]

Recommendation 44

Create a National Indigenous Housing Ombudsperson to evaluate and publicly report on the performance of governments in relation to Urban/Indigenous housing.[42]