The Harper government will propose spending more than $2 billion on social housing nationwide, according to a report in the Toronto Star.
“The spending is expected to be part of the aggressive stimulus package unveiled in Tuesday's federal budget and could provide a boost for tradespeople hit by the slowdown in the new housing market,” writes Bruce Campion-Smith, chief of the Star’s Ottawa bureau.
Campion-Smith reports that the housing package is expected to include:
$1 billion to renovate existing social housing.
$600 million for on-reserve housing to help address a frequent call from aboriginal leaders to improve the state of housing. "There are significant investments required there," Finley said.
$400 million for seniors housing.
$75 million for housing for people with disabilities.
The Toronto Star added:
Normally, Ontario would expect to get about 30 per cent, or $300 million, of the $1 billion national fund for renovating social housing. But in a pre-budget paper, an Ontario social housing group estimated that this province alone needs $1.2 billion by 2012 to renovate existing social housing stock.
Toronto Community Housing, the city's social housing provider, says the immediate need in the city is for $300 million, or $1.1 billion over 10 years. But Toronto's estimated take of the fund would be about $120 million.
Previously leaked budget expectations include:
A $34 billion deficit in the fiscal year that begins April 1, followed by a $30 billion deficit in 2010-11.
$1 billion fund to help retrain workers in hard-hit industries – mining, farming, and forestry communities.
$500 million to modernize farms and help provide better equipment.
$100 million for better forestry technology.
$50 million to promote Canada's forestry sector abroad.
Also expected are some tax cuts and two new economic development agencies, one for southern Ontario and another for Northern Canada.
Monte Paulsen reports on housing for The Tyee.ca
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Dungeness_Crab
3 years ago
Does this mean
money will be found to reopen Little Mountain?
Didn't think so.
alive
3 years ago
Some are more equal?
I fail to understand why society is responsible for maintaining and upgrading some peoples houses?
Particularily so when those same people can buy building materials tax free!
I do not have a hate-on about aboriginals, but feel they already have advantages the rest of do not have.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
Alive, Can you imagine
Alive,
Can you imagine the price we'd have to pay for BC and Canada if we'd had to confiscate it from some multinational corporation?
I think,we immigrants are getting not even a bargain, but a steal and daylight robbery.
How would we feel if our children had been kidnapped from us for something like 90 years and abused to turn them into puppets.
What did the immigrant governments achieve, and what are they achieving now by selling the country to "foreign investors"?
As far the great donations for social housing: What's the point when the same government is pushing economic crime waves that will make more and more people starving and homeless.
How about the present, secret negotiations under the SPP fraud, for the "free movement of labour between the NAFTA countries".
NAFTA completely ruined the Mexican economy, now the crooks are trying to put a patch on it with the free export of their people.
Ed Deak.
Dungeness_Crab
3 years ago
"I'm not racist but..."
LM was a true mix of society. Where did the aboriginal issue enter the discussion?
I fail to understand why society is responsible for maintaining and upgrading some peoples houses?
Please don't fail to understand how access to low income housing benefits society as a whole. I'm sure there are folks who can explain it to you far better than I.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
Society is responsible by
Society is responsible by electing governments that follow criminal ideologies and economic theories that ruin the lives of millions by stealing them blind and giving the benefits to a special interest sector.
We had no homeless, or foodbanks back in the 50s, 60s and well into the 70s, when the presently ruling neoclassical market economy was forced on Canada and the whole world by so called "conservatives", and things have been going downhill ever since.
The first foodbank opened in good "conservative" Edmonton in 1981. Now we have close to 700 of them across the richest country on Earth, many of them feeding people with starvation wages, while the top 100 CEOs averaged over $10. million each, last year, with the top jerk stealing over $50. million from the public.
We had no such rackets going 40-50 years ago, because governments didn't permit them.
Since the mid 70s we have an over 1,000% inflation of living costs, while most wages hardly doubled and hundreds of thousands are forced into minimum wage part time jobs, under unbearable conditions.
So, let's elect the same gangs again and see what the "free movement of labour" will do ?
Ed Deak.
Stump
3 years ago
advantages
"I do not have a hate-on about aboriginals, but feel they already have advantages the rest of do not have."
I think you need to say what advantages First Nations have that the rest of us do not have please Alive, so we can better understand your position.
alive
3 years ago
about being equal
My post here was phrased as a question!
I do not understand why we as a society are responsible to maintain and upgrade houses for some citizens (and not others)?
It was not saying I am against helping the poor! It was suggesting that when help is offered can we please give everybody an equal chance at it.
It would appear that "we" are supposed to be obliged because of whatever happened in the past?
I do not recall the Germans compensating me for any suffering!
One more question: for how many centuries are "we" obliged?