2024 Budget: Fairness Bill for All Generations Gets Royal Nod

Today, Bill C-69, the Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1, received Royal Assent. With the passage of this legislation, the government is advancing key priorities from Budget 2024: Fairness for Every Generation.

The adoption of Bill C-69 delivers on the federal government's plan to build a Canada that works for every generation, a Canada where everyone can get ahead, where Canadians know their hard work will pay off-and where everyone has a fair chance at success.

Measures adopted in Bill C-69 to help make homes more affordable include:

• Enhancing the Home Buyers' Plan to help first-time home buyers at a time when saving for a down payment is more and more difficult. The government is increasing the withdrawal limit from $35,000 to $60,000 and temporarily adding an additional three years to the grace period before repayments to an RRSP are required.
• Cracking down on short-term rentals to unlock more homes for Canadians to live in by denying income tax deductions on income earned from short-term rentals that do not comply with provincial or municipal restrictions.
• Banning foreign buyers of Canadian homes for an additional two years, until January 1, 2027, to ensure homes are used for Canadians to live in-not as a speculative asset class for foreign investors.

Measures adopted to strengthen Canada's social safety net include:

• Launching the new National School Food Program as early as the 2024-25 school year to help 400,000 more kids get the food they need through existing school food programs.
• Advancing the delivery of the new Canada Disability Benefit to provide financial support to persons with disabilities, with payments starting in 2025.
• Making it easier to save for your child's education by introducing automatic enrollment in the Canada Learning Bond, to ensure all low-income families receive the support they need for their children's future.
• Implementing the Canada Health Transfer 5 per cent growth guarantee to help provinces and territories deliver better universal public health care.
• Expanding the Canada Student Loan Forgiveness Program to pharmacists, dentists, dental hygienists, midwives, early childhood educators, teachers, social workers, personal support workers, physiotherapists, and psychologists who choose to work in rural and remote communities. This builds on existing loan forgiveness for doctors and nurses.

Measures adopted to help make life more affordable for Canadians include:

• Making it easier to find better deals on internet, home phone, and cell phone plans by amending the Telecommunications Act to better allow Canadians to renew or switch between plans and to increase consumer choice to help them find a deal that works best for them.
• Cracking down on auto theft by providing law enforcement and prosecutors with the tools they need to protect Canadians from having their cars stolen. Specifically, this includes more robust criminal offences related to auto theft and new restrictions on the possession and distribution of devices used to steal cars.
• Launching Canada's Consumer-Driven Banking Framework to provide Canadians and small businesses with safe and secure access to more financial services and products.
• Doing more to protect vulnerable consumers by strengthening enforcement against criminal rates of interest to protect vulnerable Canadians from harmful illegal lenders, such as loan sharks.
• Doubling the Volunteer Firefighters Tax Credit and the Search and Rescue Volunteers Tax Credit from $3,000 to $6,000, in recognition of the essential roles and sacrifices of these volunteers to keep Canadians safe.
• Enhancing the Canadian journalism labour tax credit to ensure that, as the media market changes, journalists are fairly compensated, by increasing the annual labour cost limit from $55,000 to $85,000 per employee, and temporarily increasing the tax credit rate from 25 per cent to 35 per cent.

Measures adopted to grow the economy in a way that's shared by all include:

• Delivering two more major economic investment tax credits, to attract more private investment, create more good-paying jobs, and grow the economy:
  • The 30 per cent Clean Technology Manufacturing investment tax credit; and,
  • The up to 40 per cent Clean Hydrogen investment tax credit.
• Launching the $5 billion Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program to unlock access to capital for Indigenous communities, create economic opportunities, and ensure Indigenous Peoples share in growth in a way that works for them.
• Launching the Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses, to directly return over $2.5 billion in proceeds from the price on pollution to an estimated 600,000 small- and medium-sized businesses via an accelerated and automated return process. Rebates will also be provided every year going forward.
• Getting major projects done by improving efficiency of assessment processes. This includes amending the Impact Assessment Act to ensure the Act is constitutionally sound with an efficient and effective review process for major projects, including clean energy, critical minerals, and transportation in a manner that continues to ensure environmental protection, provides meaningful participation of the public and Indigenous Peoples, and drives clean growth goals.
• Extending the 15 per cent Mineral Exploration Tax Credit for one year, expected to provide $65 million to support mineral exploration investment.
• Advancing Employee Ownership Trusts to enable employees to share in the success of their work by encouraging more business owners to sell to an Employee Ownership Trust.
• Protecting gig workers by strengthening prohibitions against employee misclassification in federally regulated industries.
• Establishing a right to disconnect to restore work-life balance for workers in federally regulated industries.
• Extending additional weeks of Employment Insurance for seasonal workers in 13 targeted regions until October 2026.
• Implementing a 15 per cent global minimum tax to ensure large multinational corporations pay their fair share, no matter where they do business.