Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise for the first time this year. My greetings to everyone here, and a happy new year to all.

As we all know, the government has a bold and broad-ranging plan to help the middle class and those working hard to join it. Yesterday, our Prime Minister made it clear that we are not planning to introduce a new tax on health and dental benefits.

Rather, our plan includes significant tax cuts to restore hope and optimism while creating new opportunities for inclusive growth that will strengthen Canada now and in the future. These tax cuts will result in a better, fairer Canada in which everyone has the opportunity to succeed and be part of our success as a society.

That is why one of the first things we did was lower taxes for the middle class. Now, nearly nine million Canadians are paying less tax on every paycheque.

Cutting the personal income tax rate for the middle class by 1.5 percentage points, from 22% to 20.5%, was our first big step toward keeping our promise to strengthen the middle class.

The next step was to introduce the Canada child benefit, or CCB, in budget 2016. The CCB is bringing us closer to our vision of a stronger middle class by giving families more money to spend on what matters to them, such as new winter clothing, healthier food, sports activities, or back-to-school supplies.

The CCB is especially important because it provides more support to low-income families, including many single-parent families. In fact, about 65% of the families who receive the maximum CCB amount are single-parent families. In most cases, they are single mothers. For hundreds of thousands of Canadian children, the CCB represents a crucial and effective step towards getting out of poverty.

Indeed, this new support will help them stay healthy as they grow up, so that they can do well in school and work towards building a successful career. With this support, they will be able to build better lives for themselves, their families, their communities, and their country.

In order to ensure that the value of the CCB does not drop over time through inflation, the government took action to index the CCB beginning with the 2020-21 benefit year. By indexing the benefits to inflation, we will preserve the gains Canadians will have made thanks to the CCB and we are investing in a better Canada for the years and decades to come.

In my riding, in the northern suburb of Montreal, 10,300 families are receiving more as a result of the CCB. In fact, 18,870 children are benefiting from it. On average, families in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles are getting monthly payments of $530. This help is very much appreciated and, let us not forget, it is tax-free.

A key aspect of our effort to build a better Canada is to provide health care to Canadians. We all know that Canada's public health care system is a source of pride to Canadians. The idea that health care should be based on need and not on the financial means of the individual is a fundamental part of our identity.

We are working openly with the provinces and territories in order to guarantee that our health care system is there to meet the needs of Canadian families. Our approach thoroughly considers and respects the roles and responsibilities of all levels of government, and it will deliver tangible, positive results for Canadians and provide them with better health care.

At the meeting of finance and health ministers held December 19, the federal government offered to pay $11 billion over 10 years to the provinces and territories, beginning in 2017-18, to support home care and mental health initiatives. I hear about these issues all the time in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

To date, we have reached agreements with New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, and Prince Edward Island for new funding over 10 years for these new investments in home care and mental health care.

According to the terms of these funding agreements, each province will receive its respective share of $11 billion for home care and mental health care offered by the federal government at the health and finance minsters' meeting held December 19. These investments will help provide Canadians with better health care and also support positive change in these priority sectors.

What is more, new investments in home care and mental health care funded by these agreements are in addition to existing funding through the Canada health transfer under the Canada Health Act. These amounts will continue to grow in the future from $36.1 billion in 2016-17 to a projected $43.1 billion in 2021-22.

With these agreements, governments will work together to develop performance indicators and annual reporting mechanisms, and also detailed plans indicating how these funds will be spent on existing programs.

The governments will work together, like Canadians want them to, to hammer out the details of their agreements' reporting requirements and ensure they are consistent with the pan-Canadian approach provided for in the December 19 offer of federal financing.

We expect these agreements will lead to improved access to mental health care services for children and youth. We also expect the number of patients in hospitals to decrease since some people will be able to be looked after at home and will receive better care there. People are happier when they can get care at home with their families.

Given this enormous potential, the Government of Canada is keeping its commitment to implement agreements with the remaining provinces in order to make it easier for Canadians to get the health care services they need when they need them.

Those are just a few of the areas in which the government's investments in Canada's middle class are paying off, not only for Canadians but for Canada itself.

We will work tirelessly to make Canada even more prosperous, inclusive, innovative, and fair for present and future generations.

However, as I clearly indicated at the beginning of my speech, our government does not intend to impose a new tax on health and dental benefits.

Linda Lapointe

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