Today, the Honourable Marci Ien, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth, spent the morning in Ontario's Durham Region where she visited Ontario Tech University's Climatic Aerodynamic Wind Tunnel (ACE) and Canada Black Owned Marketplace to highlight Budget 2023's investments in creating good jobs and growing a clean economy.
Canada has made a remarkable recovery from the COVID recession. Canada's economic growth was the strongest in the G7 over the last year, and today, 830,000 more Canadians are employed than before the pandemic, including 361,600 in Ontario. Inflation in Canada has fallen for eight months in a row, our unemployment rate is near its record low, and, supported by our Canada-wide system of affordable early learning and childcare, the labour force participation rate for women aged 25 to 54 reached at a record high of 85.7 per cent in February.
Budget 2023 builds on this important progress.
To build Canada's clean economy, the budget makes transformative investments to fight climate change and create new opportunities for Canadian businesses and workers. This includes significant measures that will deliver cleaner and more affordable energy, support investment in our communities, and create good-paying jobs.
With a responsible fiscal plan that will see Canada maintain the lowest deficit and the lowest net debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, Budget 2023 will help to build a Canada that is more secure, more sustainable, and more affordable for people from coast to coast to coast.
