3 key takeaways from the 2024 federal budget

Well, it was a big day yesterday in Ottawa as the federal budget was unveiled. The budget includes $53 billion in spending over five years. And here to break down where some of that coin is going. Expert Robina. Ahmed’s here. That’s right, Robina. All right, So what were some of the biggest takeaways from this budget? So the biggest take away is the federal government is focused laser focused on housing and increasing housing supply. The lion’s share of the money of this new spending, 19 billion of it is going to go towards new housing builds, apartment purpose built apartment rentals, loans for developers to build those more money to develop federal lands and federal buildings rather into to to housing that Canadians could live in. They want to create 3 point 1,000,000 units by 2031. That’s a really, really aggressive target and that this this is how they’re saying they’re going to get there. They say this is going to help the housing crisis by increasing supply and therefore bringing down demand. All right, OK. Federal government also targeting wealthy Canadians. Rubina, tell us more about this. Yeah, so this is specifically for Canadians who are selling a investment. So for example, if you own an investment property, it’s not your primary residence. If you sell that, you have to pay capital gains on any of the the, the profits that you see on that home. What they’re saying is that beyond $250,000, they are going to have a capital gains tax of 2/3 of that amount. So this is something that people should keep in mind ’cause right now a lot of people are selling second properties that they may have purchased back in, you know the mid twenty 10s that they are now founding finding unaffordable because of the higher interest rates. So do be aware that this higher capital gains will affect you if your if your profit is more than $250,000 and as well taxing corporations. There’s been some criticism lauded at this that this is actually going to hinder corporations ability to scale to hire, to increase wages. But this is how they’re saying they’re going to come up with the money to pay for these housing initiatives and other initiatives that they announced yesterday. Wow. So is there relief, do you think there’s relief for Canadians? So there wasn’t anything that was tangible that, you know, like that we’ve seen in the past, like the Canada Child Benefit when it was announced that, you know, money in Canadian households pocket. There is some relief for small businesses when it comes to the carbon tax, a rebate for them. So that could trickle down into consumer spending less so they won’t have to raise prices. There’s also a billion dollars, which was already announced for a school program for lunches in elementary schools across the country. I was really surprised to hear that Canada is the only G7 nation that does not have a lunch program. Now, this will save families money, ’cause we don’t have to send your kids with a lunch. And it will also be a hot lunch. So that is a, you know, 2 two things that are positive for. They’re saying it’s gonna serve 400,000 kids across the country. All right, well, Robina, thank you so much for breaking it down. I know there was a lot to look at. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me.