Your Money: Breaking down the 2024 federal budget

Well, we now know what is in the federal budget for 2024. The Trudeau government announcing new money for housing dominated the spending. But how will this help Canadians pocketbooks? To help break all of this down, we’re joined now by personal finance expert Rubina Ahmed Hawk. So Rubina, always great to see you. There was a lot to, there’s a lot to come through in the budget. So I have to ask you, you know what did you find is the biggest take away from it. The biggest take away for me was that they really are focused on housing, which I think was smart because that’s number one one of Canadians issues that we’re facing right now. Whether you’re an owner or you’re looking for a home or you’re renting a home or you’re thinking of changing homes, the cost of doing that has dominated the conversation for the last year. So they’re putting almost $19 billion of this $53 billion budget into housing initiatives, be it building new apartment buildings, building new housing, providing loans to developers so they can accelerate their programs to build housing. And this is they They say they want to create units, enough units, more than 3 million of them, by 2031. And they say this is the issue that is going to bring prices down, increase supply so that can bring prices down and make life more affordable for Canadians. This is their solution to how they’re going to tackle the housing crisis, all right. And Rubina, the federal government appears to be targeting wealthier Canadians in this budget. So what can you tell us about that? So they’re increasing capital gains for anyone who has a capital gain of more than $250,000. Now to put that in perspective, if you say you sold a cottage and the gain on that home was $500,000 and say it was yours alone, the 1st $250,000 would be subject to 50% capital gains. So 50% of those proceeds would be subject to capital gains. You have to pay income tax on it. They’re saying after that $250,000 mark, a 2/3 of it will be subject to capital gains. So really focused on those who are selling a asset like an investment, stocks and bonds, anything that you’re selling in the year that is not protected in a in a RSP or TF, FSA situation as well. They’re also raising taxes on corporates, corporations that are selling businesses and they say this is focused on things like lawyers offices, doctor’s offices. There is an upper limit of that. But they are going to be targeting those businesses so that they can collect more tax revenue, they say in the billions to pay for all the programs, especially the housing programs that they’ve announced. OK. And Rubina, of course, parents want to know, was there any money announced for school programs? Yeah, there was. And I, you know, I was really surprised to learn that Canada is the only G7 nation that does not have a federal lunch program. And so this $1 billion that they are now putting into school programs, they say is going to provide lunches for or food for 400,000 students across the country. Now this is going to do do two things. One, it’s going to alleviate some of the costs associated with making lunches. Anyone who has kids knows that it is frustrating having to make a lunch, have it come home and if they didn’t eat it, you throw it out. So the lunch program would mitigate some of that because if your child is not hungry at lunch, they may not take as much food and they’ll be a little bit more controlled and what that hopefully that that they’re consuming at that time. But it also is going to make life easier for parents because it is a stressful situation every morning to make lunches to send them to school with your kids. This really is a program that I think is a long overdue and again, super surprised that they we did not have a program until now that’s federally funded for for students across the country. OK, and that was one of the sort of pre budget announcements that we had heard of. There were a lot leading up to Tuesday’s announcement. But I think what Canadians really want to know, our viewers want to know, Rubina, is there any relief in this latest budget for people out there? So there was no major pocketbook issues that were announced during this budget. And like you said, a lot of it was already announced before the budget even came down. But we can look at some rebates that they’re giving back to small businesses. This is on the carbon tax. They’re saying that the small businesses will get some rebate back that could translate into lower consumer prices because they won’t have to pass that on to the consumer. There is money for student housing. So those students who are looking for housing, there is more money available to them and we know that students are laden with a lot of loans as it is. And so this is going to give them relief. And so there is some money. But really the focus on this budget was on housing, building affordable housing. But this is going to take time even by their own own timeline 12 to 18 months to actually get houses built. And my criticism has always been is that you can announce you know as much as you need to that housing will be built. We’re going to build on federal lands. We’re going to convert Canada Post office location locations into homes, whatever it is. But until the people are living in those homes and actually living a more affordable lifestyle, they can’t start saving towards their own future, their own retirement, their own kids education. They have to actually be in those homes to get that process started. All right, Rubina, thank you so much for breaking the budget down for us. We appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. That is personal finance expert Rubina Ahmed Hawk and host of For What It’s Worth On Course, radio stations.