Today, the Minister of Transport, the Honourable Omar Alghabra, was in Sault Ste Marie to highlight Budget 2023's investments to create good, middle-class jobs and build a stronger, more sustainable, Canadian economy.
Canada has made a remarkable recovery from the COVID-19 recession. Our 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 and offers a series of major investments to ensure that Canada's clean economy can generate prosperity, well-paying jobs and more vibrant communities across the country.
Budget 2023 outlines:
- An Investment Tax Credit for Clean Electricity: a 15 per cent refundable tax credit for eligible investments in non-emitting electricity generation systems (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc.); abated natural gas-fired electricity generation; stationary electricity storage systems that do not use fossil fuels in operation; and equipment for the transmission of electricity between provinces and territories.
- An Investment Tax Credit for Clean Technology Manufacturing: a refundable tax credit equal to 30 per cent of the cost of investments in new machinery and equipment used to manufacture or process key clean technologies, and extract, process, or recycle key critical minerals.
- An Investment Tax Credit for Clean Hydrogen: to support between 15 to 40 per cent of eligible project costs, with the projects that produce the cleanest hydrogen receiving the highest levels of support.
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 build a Canada that is more secure, more sustainable, and more affordable for people from coast-to-coast-to-coast.
