Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said that she was happy to see the new housing measures in the latest federal budget.
On social media Tuesday night, she wrote: “I welcome the Government of Canada’s budget, which contains strong measures to promote rapid access to social and affordable housing. Montreal will continue to make its voice heard with other levels of government, and to work with them to defend the priorities of the metropolitan region: building more housing, ensuring the resilience of the territory and improving quality of life.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the federal budget on Tuesday, with the aims to appeal to young Canadians.
The Canadian government is projecting $53 billion in new spending over the next five years, with higher capital gains taxes on high-earners and businesses, to promote generational fairness and to address the housing crisis.
These new measures will seek to accelerate the construction of new homes to address the housing supply, provide meals to lower income school children and take the first steps to a national pharmacare program that will initially cover the costs of birth control and diabetes medications.
Also, the government says it is looking at converting government buildings to residential homes, including land currently occupied by Canada Post outlets or surplus Canadian Armed Forces.
It will also create a $500 million fund to buy unused buildings from provincial or municipal governments to possible convert into housing.
“I certainly feel Canadians of my generation and older Canadians have a desire to see younger Canadians succeed and have the opportunities we had to succeed,” Freeland said in a press conference Tuesday.
In Montreal, the budget describes that the National Film Board offices on Côte-de-Liesse Road will soon have 100 housing units.
On Wednesday, at a spring cleanup event at Parc des Faubourgs in Montreal, Plante said that the overall deficit isn’t as big as she thought it would be.
“I guess as a Canadian it’s a good thing,” she said. “I would say what I’m satisfied about is the political will of this budget of addressing the issue of housing. The fact that the federal government is investing a lot of money and the provincial also did match the $900 million that the federal was putting earlier this month, to me it’s good news.”
Since coming to power in 2015, the Liberal government has run a deficit every year.
This year’s budget projects the deficit will fall to $20 billion by 2028-29 with no future date to balance the books.
-With files from The Canadian Press
