Issue link: https://canadawidemedia.uberflip.com/i/812937
38 >> OUR HOUSE Spring 2017 Dominion LenDing CentreS (2) CoUrteSY oF DLC Dr. Sherry Cooper weighs in on the 2017 Federal Budget By DR. SHERRY COOPER B udget 2017 continues the government's commitment to support the middle class by enhancing Canada's long-term growth potential. investments to foster innovation, skills and the ability to attract top talent from around the world are included. An important and growing competitive advantage is Canada's openness to trade and immigration, having a broader range of free trade agreements than any other g7 country. this is particularly potent today as the U.S. is aiming to retrench from free trade and even potentially impose trade restrictions and border-adjustment taxes. ottawa is also targeting a few high-potential sectors for government support, including advanced manufacturing, agri- food, clean technology (a sector that the trump administration might well be abandoning), digital industries, health/bio sciences and clean resources (also very different from proposed U.S. policy), with the hope of enhancing growth and creating jobs. Housing initiatives many were concerned that the government would take additional action to slow the housing market, particularly in toronto where it continues to be very strong. no such action was taken. the budget document comments on the high level of household debt relative to income and the affordability concerns in Vancouver and toronto; however, Budget 2017 suggests that "recent government actions (announced in october 2016) will help mitigate risk and ensure a healthy and stable housing market." Budget 2017 proposes to invest more than $11.2 billion over 11 years in a variety of initiatives to build, renew and repair Canada's stock of affordable housing. A new national Housing Fund will be administered through Canada mortgage and Housing Corporation (CmHC) to expand lending for new rental housing supply and renewal, support innovation in affordable housing, preserve the affordability of social housing and support a strong and sustainable social housing sector. more federal lands will be available for affordable housing. Details to come later this year. Budget 2017 will also allocate just shy of $40 million to Statistics Canada over five years to develop and implement a new housing database: the Housing Statistics Framework (HSF). the HSF builds on the money allocated in last year's budget to collect data on foreign ownership of housing. According to Budget 2017, "the HSF will leverage existing data from provincial- territorial land registries, property assessment programs and administrative records to create a nationwide database of all residential properties in Canada and provide up-to-date data on purchases and sales. Statistics Canada will begin publishing initial data in the fall of 2017." Fiscal prudence notably, this budget posts deficits as far as the eye can see. the good news is that ottawa reintroduced a contingency reserve to adjust for potential risk of $3 billion per year. this reserve fund was a long-standing practice of prior governments and was absent from Budget 2016. ottawa, however, continues to focus on a reduction in the debt-to-gDp ratio DR. SHERRY COOPER is the chief economist at DLC and an award- winning authority on economics. TOOLBOX CANADA A step towards stronger potential gROwTH