​BRAMPTON, ON – Yesterday, Budget 2024 Canada was released by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

This year’s budget, Fairness for every generation, is “the government’s plan to build more homes, faster, help make life cost less, and grow the economy in a way that helps every generation get ahead”. 

The City highlights federal commitments to initiatives of key interest to Brampton:

Housing and Infrastructure:

• Topping-up the Housing Accelerator Fund with an additional $400 million, so municipalities can cut red tape, fast-track home construction, and invest in affordable housing. This top-up will fast-track an additional 12,000 new homes in the next three years.
• Launching a new $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund to accelerate the construction and upgrading of critical housing infrastructure. 
• To access long-term, predictable funding for public transit through the federal government’s forthcoming Permanent Public Transit Fund, municipalities will be required to take action that will directly unlock housing supply. 
• Delivering a $15 billion top-up to the Apartment Construction Loan Program to build a minimum of 30,000 new apartments.
• Launching Canada Builds – partnership with provinces and territories to build more rental housing across the country. The federal government is leveraging its $55 billion Apartment Construction Loan Program by making it available to support partnerships with provinces and territories that launch their own ambitious housing plans.
• Launch of a new $1.5 billion Canada Rental Protection Fund to protect affordable housing and create thousands of new affordable apartments.
• Launching a new $50 million Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund that will seek to leverage an additional $150 million from the private sector and other orders of government to support the scale-up, commercialization, and adoption of innovative housing technologies and materials, including for modular and prefabricated homes. 
• Delivering $50 million to modernize and expedite home building through the regional development agencies. 
• Delivering $500 million to support rental housing. With low-cost financing through the Apartment Construction Loan Program, this will support new rental housing projects using innovative construction techniques from prefabricated and modular housing manufacturers as well as other homebuilders.
• Launching a modernized Housing Design Catalogue to standardize up to 50 efficient, cost-effective, and liveable home blueprints. 

Community and Social Investments:

• Creating a new National School Food Program, which will provide $1 billion over five years, starting in 2024-25, to expand existing provincial and territorial school food programs to provide healthy meals to 400,000 more children each year.
• $500 million for a new Youth Mental Health Fund to help community organizations provide more care.
• Providing $351.2 million in 2025- 26, for the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, to create 90,000 youth job placements and employment support opportunities.
• $1 billion in loans and $60 million in grants to build or renovate child-care centres, as well as $48 million to extend student loan forgiveness for early childhood educators.
• Providing $500 million over five years, starting in 2024-25, to Infrastructure Canada to support more projects through the Green and Inclusive Community Buildings program.
• Amending the Criminal Code to provide additional tools for law enforcement and prosecutors to address auto theft. These include: ­
• New criminal offences related to auto theft involving the use of violence or links to organized crime; possession or distribution of an electronic or digital device for the purposes of committing auto theft; and laundering proceeds of crime for the benefit of a criminal organization; and, ­ 
• A new aggravating factor at sentencing if an offender involved a young person in committing an offence under the Criminal Code. 
• Budget 2024 also details federal announcements to address auto theft, including:
• $28 million was announced on February 7, 2024, to strengthen the Canada Border Services Agency’s capacity to detect and search containers with stolen vehicles, and for testing technologies that could support the work of border services officers.
• $15 million was announced on February 21, 2024, for Public Safety Canada to allocate funding to provincial, territorial, and municipal police forces to address auto theft, and to strengthen policing to crack down on international organized crime.
• On April 3, 2024, the Canada Border Services Agency, in collaboration with police forces across Ontario and Quebec, announced the success of an operation that recovered nearly 600 stolen vehicles from the Port of Montreal.
• Amending the Radiocommunication Act to regulate the sale, possession, distribution, and import of devices used to steal cars, enabling law enforcement agencies to remove devices believed to be used to steal cars from the Canadian marketplace.

Economic Growth

• Delivering a $93 billion suite of major economic investment tax credits, on a priority basis, to drive clean growth, secure the future of Canadian businesses in Canada, and create good jobs for generations to come.
• A new 10% Electric Vehicle Supply Chain investment tax credit for businesses that invest across key segments of the electric vehicle supply chain, on the cost of buildings.
• Supporting clean fuels projects by retooling the Clean Fuels Fund to deliver funding, faster, and extending the Fund for an additional four years, until 2029-30.
  

Quotes

" I welcome support from Ottawa for our residents and businesses here in Brampton. By investing in infrastructure, we can create more spaces to call home, attract better jobs and do our part to keep costs down for families. I also welcome steps to stiffen the Criminal Code and crack down on auto theft. I call on the federal government to act with urgency to stem this criminal tide by installing desperately needed scanning devices in the coming months at our major ports and intermodal hubs.” 
Patrick Brown, Mayor, City of Brampton

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