Budget 2024 has put a fresh spin on the Liberal government’s plan to make life more affordable for Canadians with lower to moderate incomes. They’ve set aside a whopping $53 billion to spend over the next five years ($57 billion if you count what they started spending last fall). A big chunk of this cash—$8.5 billion to be exact—is going into speeding up new home construction and making housing more affordable. Most of this spending is going to happen in the next few years.
They also laid out some early plans for a national pharmacare program, though they’re only trickling $1.5 billion into it over five years. And while they’re expanding their plans to boost productivity with $2.4 billion going into AI and tech infrastructure, we’ll just have to wait and see if these moves actually make a dent in Canada’s economic future.
There’s some eyebrow-raising stuff too, like the unexpected hike in the tax rate on bigger capital gains and those made by corporations. To balance it out a bit for businesses, they’ve bumped up the lifetime cap on tax-free capital gains from $1 million to $1.25 million and rolled out a new perk for entrepreneurs.
As for the deficit, it’s looking like it’ll shrink from $40 billion this fiscal year to $20 billion by 2028-29. And while our national debt compared to the economy is set to hit its high point this year at 42.1%, it should start to ease off after that.
Boris Mahovac
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