Making housing more affordable means making historic, generational investments in housing and transportation.

One of the core pillars of our movement to increase affordability is the $55+ billion National Housing Strategy. This is the first significant federal investment in housing in over 50 years. We’re investing in housing across the entire continuum; from homelessness, to supportive housing, social housing, and rental housing. We also invested in Indigenous housing because Indigenous communities deserve safe, affordable, and accessible housing options to live and raise their families.

The key aspects of the National Housing Strategy include:

• A reduction of homelessness by 50%.
• The removal of housing strains on more than 530,000 households.
• The creation of 100,000 new housing units: four times more than the previous Conservative government.
• The repair and renewal of more than 300,000 housing units: three times more than the previous government.
• The protection of an additional 385,000 households from losing an affordable place to live.
• Introduced the First-Time Home Buyer Incentive, which will provide first-time homebuyers with an incentive of up to 10% of the house price, lowering the amount of the mortgage as well as the monthly mortgage payments.

We know that investing in the middle class has worked.

Growing the economy and creating a million new jobs only increases quality of life if we can ensure that everyone can benefit from their hard work. By lowering taxes for the middle class and providing more support for families and skills training, we’ve reduced unemployment to its’ lowest level in 50 years. We are focused on lowering Canada’s debt-to-GDP ratio and keeping Canada’s triple A credit rating in check. Unlike the last two Conservative governments, who account for 72% of our country’s total debt, we are only making investments where we will get long-term returns, like in infrastructure, education, and health.

• Lowered small business taxes from 11% to 9% (now the lowest rate in the G7).

• The new Canada Workers Benefit provides low-income families up to $2,335 per year, helping more than two million Canadians, and by 2020, will have helped lift around 70,000 Canadians out of poverty.

• The Canada Training Benefit will give Canadians the opportunity to do four weeks of training every four years to adapt to the changing workplace. It will provide up to $1,000 to pay for training, as well as additional income support to help with everyday expenses.

• Doubled the number of youth who received summer jobs through the Canada Summer Jobs Program to ensure that young Canadians get the experience they need to secure the good-paying jobs of the future.

When we took office in 2015, we immediately announced two major policies that have since had a positive impact on making life more affordable in Burnaby and North Vancouver.

The first was a middle-class tax cut. Lowering income taxes for nine million middle class families means they have more money to invest in everything from housing to school supplies.

The other was the historic Canada Child Benefit (CCB), which has had the most profound impact on child poverty reduction of any government action in Canadian history. For almost 8,000 families in Burnaby and North Vancouver who are benefiting from this program, they are receiving more money every month for everything from healthy groceries, to new clothes, to extracurriculars.

Lifting kids out of poverty empowers them to work for their dreams. The Canada Child Benefit is our government’s way of showing that we believe in making sure every family, and every child, has a fair opportunity to achieve success.

Investing in affordable child care options is a huge pillar of our plan to increase affordability. This is why we invested $7.5 billion over 11 years to increase the number of affordable child care spaces and make it more affordable for parents to return to work. In 2018, we signed an agreement with the BC government which allocated $153 million over three years to:

• Create an estimated 1,370 licensed infant/toddler child care spaces across the province in areas of highest need.
• Provide at least 1,786 children across the province access to low-cost infant/toddler spaces over two years.
• Support up to 4,000 future and current early childhood educators in earning or upgrading their certification as well accessing training opportunities.
• Provide approximately 590 families, living both on and off reserve, with access to culturally based Indigenous child care.
• Support approximately 1,428 additional children with developmental delays or disabilities accessing extra support needs.
• Increase funding for the Young Parent Program by 63% to ensure its ongoing sustainability in providing access to no-fee child care for young parents completing their secondary school education.