Date of publication: 7 Apr 2022 • 5 hours ago • 5 minutes reading • 129 comments The Liberal-NDP pact adds costly elements, such as a national dental plan, to the 2022 federal budget. Photo by Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press
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The Liberal government’s budget for 2022 includes about $ 15 billion in spending on major initiatives related to the bidding and trust agreement with the NDP – enough to satisfy NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.
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Singh said the NDP would support the budget, telling reporters that although his party disagreed with some of the budget measures, it was “an example of good faith that appears”. Some of the budget measures related to housing and health initiatives, including a dental care program, were included in the Liberal-NDP agreement announced last month. The budget expects to generate about $ 6.1 billion in five years from new taxes on banks and financial institutions, another NDP asks. Some of the spending measures, such as the $ 4 billion for a new Housing Acceleration Fund, were also on the Liberals’ campaign platform before being listed as priorities in the NDP-Liberal agreement. Others, especially dental care, came from the NDP.
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The budget has $ 5.3 billion over five years and then $ 1.7 billion on an ongoing basis for the dental program. Children under the age of 12 will be covered this year, with the program being extended to people under the age of 18, the elderly and people with disabilities next year. The program, which will be available to families with an annual income of less than $ 90,000, will be fully implemented by 2025. Pharmacare was another high-profile NDP priority, with both parties agreeing to continue to make progress on a global national pharmaceutical plan. The budget has no funding for pharmaceutical care, but says the government will submit a bill for Canada Pharmacare and work to get it approved by the end of 2023 and instruct the Canadian Drug Administration to develop a national prescription drug and bulk shopping plan. “
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Singh said Wednesday that the NDP-Liberal agreement sets out a bill in 2023, meaning work was “still well on its way”. He said “it was not something we envisioned for this year”. The budget also describes about $ 6 billion for various housing initiatives mentioned in the agreement between the two parties. The largest of these is $ 4 billion over five years for the Housing Accelerator Fund, which focuses on increasing the supply of housing – a total of 100,000 clean new housing units over the next five years. “To make housing more affordable, more homes need to be built,” the budget said. The goal is “to motivate cities and towns that are intensifying to build more housing, while ensuring that municipalities can receive the support they need to modernize and build new homes.”
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While the $ 4 billion was promised by the Liberals in the last election, two additional housing-related measures were not promised. The budget has $ 1.5 billion over two years to expand the Rapid Housing Initiative, which the government expects to create “at least 6,000 new affordable homes.” Another $ 475 million will be donated to Canada Housing Benefit to provide a “$ 500 lump sum payment to those facing housing affordability challenges.” Singh said there are changes to the definition of affordability and $ 4 billion in indigenous housing that would not have happened without his party. The NDP-Liberal deal called on the government to make a “significant additional investment” in indigenous housing, and the budget includes $ 4 billion over seven years in new money to be allocated to Indigenous Services Canada and Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada “to speed up work to close indigenous housing gaps” in Stocks and Indigenous communities.
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Singh said there was a “significant increase in housing for indigenous communities that would not be there but for the fact that we fought for it.” “We fought for an extra $ 4 billion – more than what the government was going to do.” The budget also promises to reform the Rental Construction Financing Initiative to include an increased focus on affordability. Singh said the changes to his party’s definition of affordability – from 80 percent of median income to 80 percent of market rent – would make a big difference. “All the investments that this government is going to make in affordable housing would result in inaccessible housing. “This definition alone has significantly changed the overall perspective on the affordability of the homes to be built,” Singh said.
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Also not costed, but included in the budget, and also previously promised on the Liberal platform, is a promise to move forward with the Housing Buyers’ Declaration, which could include measures such as ensuring that home buyers have a legal right in house inspection. The budget also provides an unspecified amount of a total of $ 209.8 million “to increase support provided to communities for documenting, locating and remembering landfills in former residential schools”, another priority included in the agreement. A measure also included in the Liberal-NDP agreement is expected to generate revenue for the government. Banks and life insurance groups will “pay a lump sum tax of 15 percent on taxable income of more than $ 1 billion for fiscal year 2021,” the budget said. It is expected to generate $ 4 billion over the next five years. The government is also steadily raising tax rates for some banks and life insurance groups, bringing in an additional $ 2 billion.
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“While many industries continue to recover, Canada’s major financial institutions made significant profits during the pandemic and have recovered faster than other parts of our economy — in part because of federal pandemic support for people and businesses that helped disperse the mob. of the balance sheets of some of Canada’s largest financial institutions, ”the budget said. “The federal government is therefore proposing two measures to ensure that these large financial institutions are helping to support Canada’s wider recovery.” Although not costed or included in the NDP-Liberal agreement, the budget also includes a reference to increased taxes for Canada’s richest people – something the NDP has been fighting for for years. The budget stated that 28 percent of taxpayers with a gross income of more than $ 400,000 pay a federal rate of 15 percent or less, making “significant use of deductions and tax deductions.” He noted that this is “less than what some middle-class Canadians pay”. The Liberals also promised such a tax on their election platform. The budget promised to consider a new minimum tax system, which it said “would go further to ensure that all wealthy Canadians pay their fair share of the tax.” She said she would provide additional details about the measure in her budget update later this autumn.
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