Thank you very much.
Good afternoon.
It’s wonderful to have so many of you here, in particular to see all of the kids who have beenable to join us today.
Thank you all for being here.
Thank you first of all to my introducer.
Joe is not just a great member of our team but you should know that he really took up the workthat Jim Flaherty and I had begun.
He has worked very hard for the last few months to really put together the comprehensiveannouncement we’re making today.
He’s doing a terrific job, so give the Honourable Joe Oliver another big hand.
Thank you to Stella and to Candice for keeping us on track.
And I want to welcome all of our Members of Parliament, but in particular our host JulianFantino.
Please welcome all of the members today.
And also let’s give our hosts here at the Lebovic Jewish Community Campus a big hand forhosting us for this great event.
This is a wonderful facility.
I have to say it’s just enormous.
I’ve only seen a corner of it I think, but our Government is really proud to have helped supportits construction.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me just get into the announcement.
And let me begin with this.
You have heard me say this before.
Strong families make a strong country.
And our goal as a government has always been to make sure that Canada is the best country inthe world in which to raise a family.
That’s why we work hard to support families in so many ways.
Today I want to talk to you specifically about how we can help families who are trying to makeends meet.
We know that Canadians work hard for their money.
We know that they work hard raising their families too.
There’s childcare, the general expenses of family life, clothing, food, drug costs, extra schoolcosts, dentists.
And then there’s the extra activities, we talked about the baseball, the karate, the earlymornings at the rink, the dance classes, and so on.
There are so many worthwhile things for children to do nowadays.
Our Government is utterly convinced of one thing.
When it comes to the costs of raising a family, Canada’s moms and dads deserve all of the helpthat we can give them.
That’s why, as soon as we came to office, our Government focused on family friendly measures.
We lowered the GST for all families, for all consumers, by two percentage points.
We introduced Tax-Free Savings Accounts.
And it’s especially why, to help young families, we introduced the Universal Childcare Benefit.
That’s the benefit that puts $100 per month, per child, for each child under the age of six –that’s $1200 a year – directly into the hands of parents.
As a result of all of our initiatives, including the Universal Childcare Benefit, the average familyof four with one child under six now has over 4 1/2 thousand more dollars in their pockets thanthey did before our Government came to office.
And we haven’t stopped in our efforts to give Canadian families a break.
As I just mentioned here when we were talking about sports, to give you the most recentexample, in 2019 we introduced the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit.
This common-sense measure helps families to make healthy activities more financiallyaccessible for hundreds of thousands of Canadian children.
And earlier this month I was delighted to announce that starting this year, 2019, we aredoubling the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit for every Canadian family.
Just by the way, as we had promised to do.
And not only are we doubling it so that lower income families who pay little or no income taxwill still be able to benefit starting in the year 2019, January 1st, the Children’s Fitness TaxCredit will become refundable.
That is, a check can come back… It can come back to you as a check for lower income parents.
Now building on these positive results for parents, I am pleased to announce today that we aretaking three more significant steps, steps that will make life more affordable for all Canadianfamilies with children.
And ladies and gentlemen, we are doing them right here, right now, at this Centre.
First, I am happy to announce that, to assist parents with the costs of child care, we areincreasing the annual Childcare Expense Deduction Limits by $1000 across-the-board, for everychild.
This will begin with the 2019 tax year, January 1st.
Second: to help make life more affordable for all families with children, our Government isreplacing the current Child Tax Credit with an expanded Universal Childcare Benefit.
Families will now receive $160 per month, almost $2019 per year, for each child under the ageof six.
And, effective the 1st of January 2019, the parents of kids aged 6 to 17 will receive $60 permonth.
That’s $720 per year for every single child.
Finally, I’m delighted to confirm that, as promised in the last election, our Government willintroduce a significant new measure for Canadian families with children, the Family Tax Cut.
Just as our Government’s pension income-splitting has made life more affordable for seniors,our Government’s Family Tax Cut will make life more affordable for hundreds and hundreds ofthousands of Canadian families.
So effective this year, 2019, couples with children under 18 years of age, will, for the purposeof calculating federal taxes, be able to transfer up to $50,000 of income from the higherearning spouse to the lower earning spouse, and thereby save up to a maximum of $2019 ayear in federal taxes.
Now ladies and gentlemen, all of these measures…
All of these things, the Children’s Fitness Tax Credit, the Family Tax Cut, the expandedUniversal Childcare Benefit, and the greater Childcare Expense Deduction limits, these add upto real dollars in the pockets of Canadian families, families like Ryan, Shawn, Ramzi, andAdeline, and their children.
The average benefit for Canadian families will be over $1100 per year.
That is direct money.
And that, by the way, is on top of the benefits and cuts previously introduced by ourGovernment.
Friends, under the plan we have announced today, every single Canadian family with childrenwill benefit.
Everyone will have more money in their pockets.
So let me just close with this.
The economics of government, friends, are not really so different from the economics of thekitchen table.
There are more zeros but in the end it’s about setting priorities, making the right choices, andliving within your means.
We are fulfilling our commitment to Canadian families and more.
Friends, we are doing this while remaining on track, as we promised, to balance our budget in2019.
And we have always been clear as a government – this is the difference between our philosophyand the others – we have always been clear that money and support to help families raisechildren should not go into more bureaucracy; it should go to the real experts on child care.
That’s mom and dad, and that is what we’re doing.
Thank you all for being here.
