Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, I happened to catch Stephen Poloz's speech on budget 2018. Hearing the governor of the Bank of Canada's remarks on our federal budget filled me with pride. Hearing his optimism about the present macroeconomic situation, including the creation of over 280,000 jobs in the past 12 months and the lowest unemployment in 40 years, made me proud to be a part of this government that believes in evidence-based policy and uses it to make informed and sound financial decisions for this country.

The notable takeaway from Bank of Canada Governor Poloz highlighted the groups of people in Canada who represent sources of untapped potential. These include youth, women, indigenous people, and the growing number of recent migrants. Let us focus on youth for a minute.

The governor cites young people as one of the sources of untapped potential, and I wholeheartedly agree. There is a decline in youth participation in the economy, and for Canada to truly prosper, more young Canadians will have to have jobs and pathways to these jobs must be created. This where budget 2018 comes in.

In budget 2018, the new Canada workers benefit would encourage more people and more youth to join the workforce. Our plan will offer real help to more than two million Canadians who are working hard to join the middle class. Our plans anticipate raising roughly 70,000 Canadians out of poverty. At the same time, starting in 2019, the government will also make it easier for people to access the benefit they have earned, making changes that will allow the Canada Revenue Agency to calculate the CWB for any tax filer who has not claimed it yet.

The Canada workers benefit replaces the working income tax benefit. This means that low-income workers earning $15,000 would receive up to almost $500 more from the CWB in 2019 than in 2018 to invest and spend on things that are important to them, such as groceries, utilities, and other essentials.

Our government ensures the smooth running of any new measure we introduce. As such, over the next year the government will work to determine if the delivery of the CWB can be further improved to provide better support to low-income Canadians throughout the year, rather than through an annual refund after filing their taxes.

It is no secret that budget 2018 has been referred to as a ''gender budget", and I am proud to say that every single decision on expenditures and tax measures in this budget was informed by a gender-based analysis. A gender-based analysis such as this is important to target particular groups and produce evidence-based policy, and to help end the income gap between women and men doing equal work.

The most notable example of this in budget 2018 is the promise to fund a dedicated second parent leave under employment insurance that will see $240 million in funding a year rising to $345 million. This includes giving couples who share parental leave an additional five weeks of paid benefits, starting in June 2019. These measures seek to increase the number of men who take time off after the arrival of a new child. The new parental sharing benefit will allow two-parent families, including same-sex parents and people who adopt, to share the opportunity to take an additional five to eight weeks away from work to spend with their children.

Despite these efforts, much work needs to be done to make child care accessible to parents. Lack of child care is what keeps women out of the workforce, as research has shown. In order to encourage and facilitate more women's participation in the labour force, we must lower the cost of child care. Our government is committed to making affordable early learning and child care more accessible.

In budget 2017, the government announced a long-term investment of $7.5 billion over 11 years to support more accessible and affordable early learning. Following this, the federal, provincial, and territorial governments reached an agreement on a multilateral early learning and child care framework. The government is now entering into a three-year bilateral agreement with provinces and territories in order to review and adjust these agreements as needed over the 11-year framework. So far, we have reached nine agreements.

While I am on the topic of women's participation in the workforce, it is important to mention the important contributions of women entrepreneurs. Budget 2018 recognizes this in its strategy for women entrepreneurs, with $1.65 billion in new financing being made available to women business owners, which will be delivered over three years through the Business Development Bank of Canada and Export Development Canada.

I want to talk about the Fierce Founders in Communitech in my riding. They are the first female-focused accelerator group created to encourage gender diversity in tech and encourage women entrepreneurs to start tech companies. Communitech helps with financing with this program, and it has done tremendously in our region to help female entrepreneurs get into the start-up sector and pursue high-tech jobs.

Budget 2018 proposes an additional $511 million over five years on a cash basis, starting in 2018-19, to the regional development agencies to support the innovation and skills plan across all regions of Canada. Of the $511 million, $149 million would be allocated to the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, of which $33 million will be for nationally coordinated, regionally tailored support for women entrepreneurs.

In addition, our government recognizes the barriers that make it difficult for women to launch their own businesses. Therefore, we are committed to providing $105 million over five years to reduce such barriers. Our government also has a commitment to make grants and programs for scientific research more accessible to women.

As a member of Parliament in the tri-cities, I want to talk about innovation and infrastructure, which is welcomed our region, especially in light of the federal government's $950-million innovation superclusters. I am proud to say that the University of Waterloo in my region will take a leading research role in two of the five winning bids as part of the innovation supercluster initiative. The government announced the advanced manufacturing supercluster, an innovation hotbed that is home to strong industrial clusters linked through their shared reliance on specialized inputs, including technologies, talent, and infrastructure. This supercluster will connect Canada's technology strengths to our manufacturing industry to make us a world manufacturing leader in the economy of tomorrow.

The Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario currently supports economic growth in southern Ontario through the delivery of federal programs and services. The agency's funding will be renewed to continue supporting that growth with a commitment of $920 million over six years.

Specifically in my region, as I mentioned, there is $950 million, and part of that is part of the superclusters where we are encouraging more innovation and industry to develop high technology to work to advance manufacturing and high-tech jobs so that we can grow our economy.

I would like to conclude by echoing the sentiments of Bank of Canada Governor Poloz. We are living in an incredibly optimistic economic time in Canada. Our labour market needs to work, but things are looking up as we pave the way for women, youth, and other groups to participate in our labour force. New opportunities and technologies are on the horizon, and budget 2018 is laying the groundwork for their success.

I am proud that we brought this budget forward. I am proud that I represent the riding of Kitchener South—Hespeler, where we are embracing this budget with technology, innovation, and investment so that we can grow our economy and ensure that everyone in my region and in the rest of Canada prosper.

Marwan Tabbara

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