Budget Revives Greener Homes Funding, Boosts Youth Employment and Skills Support
On April 16, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland tabled the 2024 Federal Budget: “Fairness for Every Generation”. This year’s budget focuses on key themes of housing, affordability, economic growth, and fairness for younger generations, with several measures geared towards Millennials and Gen Z voters.
The government took a new approach this year, unveiling major budget items at campaign-style announcements over the past two weeks, attempting to capture slow news days during constituency weeks when the House is not sitting.
On housing, the Liberal government is aiming to build 3.87 million homes by 2031 through a series of tax breaks, incentives, and loans. To achieve this target, housing starts will need to ramp up significantly to an average of 550,000 per year, almost double the current pace.
The budget shows a $40 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year, forecasting smaller deficits each year, declining to $20 billion in 2028-29. Debt-to-GDP ratio is projected to improve slightly from 41.9% this fiscal year to 39% in 2028-29. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit will be 1.3% in the current fiscal year and is projected to decline to 0.6% in the fifth year of the forecast.
Highlights Include:
•Over $6.7 billion, on a cash basis, for the Canada Greener Homes Grant and Loan programs, which to date have provided over 172,000 grants of up to $5,000 and 58,000 interest-free loans of up to $40,000 to help Canadians save money by making their homes more energy efficient.
•Budget 2024 proposes to provide $903.5 million over six years, starting in 2024-25, to Natural Resources Canada as follows:
$800 million over five years, starting in 2025-26, to launch a new Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program that will support the direct installation of energy efficiency retrofits for Canadian households with low- to median-incomes. This program represents the next phase of the Canada Greener Homes Initiative and will be codelivered with provincial and territorial partners. It will also be complemented by
CMHC’s Greener Homes Loan program, which provides interest-free loans of up to $40,000 for energy efficiency home retrofits.
$73.5 million over five years, starting in 2024-25, to renew and modernize existing energy efficiency programs that offer tools to building owners like the ISO 50001 Energy Management Systems Standard and the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. This funding will also spur the development of better, more ambitious building codes to further reduce emissions and lower energy bills. The federal government will encourage provinces and territories to adopt these top tier building codes.
•Ensuring everyone in Canada can fully contribute by working with provinces and territories to reduce barriers for internationally educated and certified professional and tradespeople, particularly in health care and construction sectors.
•To create 90,000 youth job placements and employment support opportunities, Budget 2024 proposes to provide $351.2 million in 202526, for the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy.
•Budget 2024 announces that Environment and Climate Change Canada will work with provinces and territories to improve the functioning of carbon credit markets, in order to help unlock additional decarbonization projects throughout Canada.
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