Chapter One – Building a stronger Canadian economy cont.
Continuing where we left off, the government is looking at how it manages our airports as part of the budget. They want to bring in more private sector investment with things like lease extensions with airport authorities, more economic development activities on airport land, and looking at airport ground lease rent formulas. They’re also considering privatization of airports. The government is also going to spend $55.2 million over 4 years on airport safety infrastructure and upgrades. This includes a runway extension at Transport Canada’s Îles de-la-Madeleine Airport
The government is going to launch the Build Communities Strong Fund which will spend $51 billion over 10 years on community-based projects and $3 billion a year after that. This money will be given to provincial governments to pass on to municipalities, and will be distributed across three streams.
The first stream will be $17.2 billion for provincial and territorial projects. This funding will support housing-enabling projects like roads and wastewater management, healthcare-based projects like hospitals, and colleges and universities. To get this money provinces and territories will need to cost-match whatever the feds contribute, substantially reduce development costs, and agree not to “levy other taxes that hinder the housing supply.” Of the $17 billion $5 billion over 3 years will be dedicated to spending on healthcare.
There’s a pretty decent list of projects that are currently being considered for funding here, most of which are things like community centres.
And now we start looking at addressing climate change. First up there’s the industrial carbon pricing. The government is promising to continue with industrial carbon pricing, but they want to work out what the pricing will be from 2030 to 2050. (Current plans only go to 2030.) They want to look at the benchmark for emissions and make sure it’s applied properly. The benchmark is the measure that determines if a province’s system for addressing carbon emissions is at least as good as the federal carbon pricing, and exempts them from the federal program when it is.
The feds are promising to introduce changes to the Canadian Environmental Protections Act to:
- Create regulations around methane emissions for oil and gas and landfills.
- Remove the oil and gas emissions cap.
- Remove the 2026 target for the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard. This standard outlined the sales targets of green vehicles (electrics and hybrids) each year, starting at 20% of sales in 2026. The government is going to reassess this program.
- Update the Clean Fuel Regulations.
Discover more from Commons Sense
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.