A Real Plan for the Middle Class

A Vaccine Strategy to Save Lives

Vaccination is our best line of defence against COVID-19 and variants of concern. It not only protects those who are vaccinated but protects those who can’t get vaccinated, like young children. That is why the Liberal government worked tirelessly to secure enough doses for every Canadian citizen, securing our supply well in advance of our initial target. And it is why we support provinces, territories, and Indigenous communities in rolling out one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world.

A Health Care System, For Everyone

Canadians are proud to have a public health care system that is a model to the world. That didn’t happen by accident. It is the result of Canadians’ belief that we take care of each other. Accessible, well-funded public health care is a cornerstone of equality in Canada. And it has been invaluable as we have fought the pandemic. We cannot take our public health care system for granted.

Mental Health Care, for Everyone

In a typical year, 1 in 5 Canadians will experience a mental illness or addiction problem. And we know that over the last 18 months, nearly half of Canadians reported that their mental health worsened during the pandemic. Mental health is health. This is why we have made mental health a priority.

Safer, Better Long-term Care

To build a better future for seniors and ensure tragedies like this never happen again, we need to make sure the conditions of work reflect the care standards our seniors deserve. That’s why we will work with provinces and territories, respecting their jurisdiction, to support seniors with an investment of $9 billion over 5 years to support safer conditions for seniors and improved wages and working conditions for personal support workers.

Protecting Public Health

Throughout the pandemic, we have put public health first. Canadians have adjusted every step of the way, and together we have found new and better ways to fight this virus. We recognize that, when this passes, we have a responsibility to review the federal response to COVID-19 and ensure that the lessons we have learned underpin our pandemic preparedness in the future. But there are things we can do now to keep Canadians safe as we finish the fight.

Helping Teachers and School Kids

This year has underscored just how important our schools and educators are. They make sure our children are engaged and thriving. Proper nutrition is also critical to creating successful learning environments.

A Home. For Everyone.

Canadians see owning a home as key to building their future and joining the middle class. But with rent increasing and housing prices continuing to rise, too many young people don’t see a clear path to affording the same lives their parents had. Everyone should have a home to call their own. And we have a three-part housing plan to make it happen.

1.4 Million New Homes

We need homes in urban centres that are built for middle class families, with the amenities to match, like accessible child care and public transit. We need affordable housing for vulnerable people like women and children fleeing violence, persons with disabilities, and youth. We need a co-developed housing plan for Indigenous people living in urban, rural, and northern off-reserve communities. And for aging parents and grandparents planning their future, or for newcomers who need more space for a growing family, we need to support multi-generational living to encourage down-sizing and aging well at home.

Protecting Your Rights

The desirability of Canadian homes is attracting profiteers, wealthy corporations, and foreign investors. This is leading to a real problem of underused and vacant housing, rampant speculation, and skyrocketing prices. Homes are for people, not investors.

Supporting Families

We know that raising a family can be expensive. Everything from housing, to food, to clothes, to child care, to new computers for online learning, making ends meet can be stressful. We believe that mothers and fathers should spend more time raising their kids, and less time worrying about how to afford to.

Supporting Seniors

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for our seniors, their families, and for the hardworking people who care for them. This pandemic has shown us that the conditions of work become the conditions of care. Canadians and their families deserve to feel confident in the care seniors receive, and our frontline heroes deserve to be supported for their tireless efforts.

Supporting Young Canadians

Young Canadians faced some of the worst economic and mental health impacts of the pandemic. We stepped up and put forward one of the largest youth support packages in the world. We want to double down on our efforts to support young people because we believe that when you invest in young people, you’re investing in Canada’s future.

Creating Beyond a Million Jobs

Thanks to our emergency programs and the hard work of Canadians, we are almost at our goal of creating one million jobs. To date, Canada has recovered 92% of jobs lost during the pandemic. By comparison, the United States has only recovered 75% of jobs lost. We have nearly reached this milestone of a million jobs created despite second and third waves, because we committed to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to get Canadians through the pandemic.

Supporting Workers

Recovery is underway in Canada. But recovery can’t just be about getting back to the way things were before. It should be about making things better. It’s about making work fairer, so that no one working full-time in Canada earns a wage that isn’t livable. It’s about equipping Canadians with the skills they want and need to be able to earn a good living. It’s about making Canada a global leader in the race for talent and making it easier and fairer for Canadians to get a job by removing barriers to work such as child care.

Supporting Canadian Businesses

When we support Canada’s businesses, we support the workers, families, and communities that rely on them. Supporting businesses and their workers is at the heart of our plan to create jobs, strengthen the middle class, and grow the economy.

Innovation, Science, and Research

We know that the spirit of innovation requires more than just tax cuts. It requires a belief in science, ambitious partnerships between government, academia and the private sector, and a plan to invest in the freshest, most innovative ideas out there.

Arts & Culture

Arts and culture draw us together and help tell us who we are. Culture is a shared experience, but for a year and a half, we have had to stay apart. Many of Canada’s stages are dark, concert halls sit empty, and exhibit halls are bare. The reality is that cultural workers and businesses are facing challenges that put their future at risk.

Vibrant Rural Communities

As our economy recovers, we need to make sure communities in every corner of the country are brought along. And that we continue to make life better for people living in small communities.

A Fairer Financial System

To help Canadians struggling through the pandemic we made sure lenders provided Canadians with options to ease their debt payments. We will take action to ensure that, as we come out of COVID-19, there are even stronger protections to level the playing field between you and your financial institution.

Protecting and Promoting Our Official Languages and Linguistic Duality

Every year, the Grand Tintamarre reminds us of the strength of our minority language communities, and their fight to keep their culture alive. But in a changing, interconnected world, our two official languages are not on equal footing. As stated in the 2020 Speech from the Throne: “There are almost 8 million Francophones in Canada within a region of over 360 million inhabitants who are almost exclusively Anglophone. The Government therefore has the responsibility to protect and promote French not only outside of Quebec, but also within Quebec.”

Gender Equality

We have always been, and always will be, a proudly feminist government. But we know there is more to do to address longstanding gender inequities in Canada.

Growing a Strong and Diverse Canada

Diversity is our strength. That’s why we want to build a Canada that welcomes and celebrates all cultures and all people.

Supporting LGBTQ2 People

We believe in a Canada where everyone can live as their true, authentic self in every aspect of life. Improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-Spirit communities is essential to building a Canada where everyone is able to participate fully.

Support for Canadians with Disabilities

Over the past six years we’ve made accessibility and disability inclusion a priority. We have focused on removing barriers and addressing disability discrimination and exclusion and forging new opportunities for Canadians with disabilities to work, contribute to their communities, and enjoy the same quality of life all Canadians deserve.

Cutting Pollution

Under the previous Conservative government, Canada’s emissions were on a path to be 12% higher in 2030 than they were in 2005, despite Stephen Harper’s promise to lower emissions by 30% by 2030. We knew this wasn’t acceptable and got to work on a serious plan. Today, Canada’s emissions are projected to be 36% lower in 2030 compared to 2005 levels. But we know there is more to do.

Green Jobs

Canadian green jobs are booming in sectors new and old, in regions across the country. Auto workers are manufacturing electric vehicles. Construction workers and tradespeople are building homes with new energy efficient materials and methods. Mill and smelter workers are making some of the cleanest aluminum and steel in the world. Aerospace workers are building the next-generation electric planes and helicopters. Small business entrepreneurs are dreaming up the next big idea to ensure we have a better, net-zero future.

An Adaptation Plan to Protect Against the Impacts of Climate Change

The extreme heatwave and wildfires across Canada this summer have underscored the urgency of fighting and adapting to climate change. Canadians need leadership that is prepared to face up to the realities of climate change and to take strong action to prepare for future extreme weather events and keep Canadians safe and healthy.

Protecting Nature

Nature is central to our lives, our communities, and our national identity. Globally, nature is under enormous stress. Human activity has altered three quarters of the earth’s surface, creating a biodiversity crisis that is threatening a million species worldwide and uprooting the essential nature we need to absorb and store carbon. We have a responsibility to act, to protect this nature for today and for the next generations of Canadians.

Tackling Plastic Pollution and Building a Circular Economy

Canadians are tired of seeing plastics littering our oceans, lakes, rivers, and parks. That’s why we are banning harmful, unrecyclable single-use plastics and have set a goal of eliminating plastic waste by 2030. A circular economy keeps plastics, and other materials, in our economy and out of our environment.

Addressing the Legacy of Colonialism and Residential Schools

The legacy of residential schools is a dark chapter in Canada’s history. Thousands of children were sent to these schools, ripped from their homes and communities, deprived of their cultures and robbed of their languages. Tragically, many of these children never came home. While we cannot bring back those who were lost, we can—and we will—tell the truth of these injustices, support communities and survivors, and forever honour their memory.

Protecting the Wellbeing of Indigenous Children

Protecting the well-being of Indigenous children has always been a top priority for us. For far too long, Indigenous children have been overrepresented in the child welfare system—part of the troubling legacy of colonialism. All children in Canada deserve to grow up in their communities, immersed in their cultures, and surrounded by loved ones.

Clean Water

We have taken strong action and invested over $4 billion in 535 water infrastructure projects, including 99 new water plants and 436 plant upgrades. As a result, Indigenous communities have been able to lift 109 long-term water advisories, which includes lifting all advisories in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada; prevent 188 short-term advisories from becoming long term ones; provide communities with funding to cover up to 100% of the costs, of maintaining their water infrastructure and ensure clean water for their communities. In every community with a long-term drinking water advisory, there is a project team and action plan in place to resolve it.

Continuing Progress on Reconciliation and Self-Determination

Since day one, we have been committed to working with Indigenous peoples to build a nation-to-nation, Inuit- Crown, government-to-government relationship that is based on respect, partnership, and the affirmation and recognition of rights. We have made good progress with First Nations, Inuit, and the Métis Nation. But this work must continue.

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A Canada Where Everyone Feels Safe

Around the world, there has been a troubling rise in hate- motivated crimes and, tragically, Canada is no exception. Canadians have been devasted by recent crimes driven by Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, and anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Indigenous, and anti-Arab racism. This is not who we are. We need to take a strong stand to make sure all Canadians feel safe.

Fair Justice and Policing

All Canadians have right to fair and just treatment before the law. But discrimination and outdated practices prevent true access to Justice. Canadians deserve better.

A Principled Approach to Foreign Policy

Now, more than ever, Canadians understand that building a safer and more stable world requires investments in our strength at home and active engagement with our partners abroad.

While the pandemic has required an unprecedented amount of spending in order to stabilize the economy, those same advantages that positioned Canada so well before, are still intact. This gives Canada a unique opportunity to build back better.

Our plan focuses on investing in people, innovation, and communities in order to position Canada as a leader in clean growth, and to be a healthier, fairer, and more prosperous society. By doing this, we will make the Canadian economy more resilient, productive, and sustainable and, most importantly, grow the middle class.

Our fiscal and costing plan is responsible, fair, transparent, and prudent.

Our plan is fair because, as we make these important and necessary investments, we are asking those who have done well through COVID-19, like Canada’s largest and most profitable financial companies, to pay more. Erin O’Toole won’t do this.

As the first federal party to release a fiscal and costing plan this election, we are setting a new bar for transparency. In building this plan we have been consulting with the PBO, having submitted many of our largest, and most complex initiatives to them for review and fully utilizing our allocated resource. This plan is based on PBO’s August 2021 economic baseline and includes assumptions for incremental debt and debt charges based on their publicly available model.

Finally, our plan is prudent. We have built a provision for risk into our planning framework. Given the unknowns and evolving natures of the pandemic, and other factors, we have included a $15 billion provision for potential deviations over the next two and a half years.