Budget 2024: Legislation to ensure fairness for every generation receives Royal Assent

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.

• 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 Creditfrom $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.

  Quotes

  “The passage of the Budget Implementation Act will further our plan to ensure that every generation has a fair chance at success. We are delivering on our economic plan to unlock the door to the middle class for more Canadians—and especially for younger Canadians. The measures enacted with the Budget Implementation Act are bold investments in housing, a stronger social safety net, and economic growth to ensure fairness for every generation.”

  - The Honourable Chrystia Freeland,
  Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance

  Associated links

  • Budget 2024: Fairness For Every Generation
  • Government of Canada announces legislation to ensure fairness for every generation
  • Address by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance
  • 2023 Fall Economic Statement

  Contacts

  Media may contact:

  Katherine Cuplinskas
  Deputy Director of Communications
  Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance
  Katherine.Cuplinskas@fin.gc.ca

  Media Relations
  Department of Finance Canada
  mediare@fin.gc.ca
  613-369-4000

  General enquiries

  Phone: 1-833-712-2292
  TTY: 613-369-3230
  E-mail: financepublic-financepublique@fin.gc.ca

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