Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in Windsor

Check Against Delivery

October 19, 2022

I am so glad to be back in Windsor. And thank you so much to everyone at the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association. We are fellow veterans, fellow survivors of the NAFTA negotiations. You guys did such a great job there, you were such an important part of Team Canada, and I am really grateful to be with you again today.

Now, Canada’s auto sector has been a driving force of Canada’s economy for generations.

Our auto workers are some of the most talented, and innovative, and resilient in the world. Project Arrow, the first fully made-in-Canada electric vehicle behind me, there is a little sneak peek right there, is a perfect example of that.

And from protecting NAFTA to securing Canada’s place in the US electric vehicle supply chain, this is why our government has fought so hard to protect and invest in our auto sector for the past seven years.

I am incredibly excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for our auto industry and for Canada’s auto workers. And that’s part of what I want to speak about a little later today.

But first, I want to talk about our economy, and about what I know so many people are feeling right now.

I spent the summer travelling across Canada—21 different cities and towns—to meet with Canadians and Canadian businesses.

I visited a family farm in Alberta, a potash mine in Saskatchewan, a start-up hub down the 401 in Kitchener-Waterloo, and the Port of Saint John in New Brunswick.

I spoke with new parents and union workers and the truckers who keep our economy moving—whether it is across the Ambassador Bridge or from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

I heard about the need to strengthen our supply chains, the need to create more good middle class jobs, and the absolutely critical need to build more of the homes that a growing country requires.

But underlying all of the conversations I had—from one end of the country to the other—was the real uncertainty that many Canadians are feeling today.

I know it’s felt like one thing after another since COVID first reached our shores in early 2020.

We have just come through a once-in-a-generation pandemic.

We turned the economy off, and then we turned it back on again. Vladimir Putin has invaded the sovereign territory of Ukraine.

And now we are dealing with inflation.

These are all related, of course. Global inflation is not created by the decisions of any one government alone, but by the combined aftershocks of two-and-a-half years of historic tumult.

But that does not lessen the impact it is having on Canadians, with higher prices at the grocery store and at the gas pump.

And it’s important, as the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, that I’m honest with Canadians about what still lies ahead.

Even as inflation continues to retreat in the months to come, and it was down to 6.9 per cent in September, falling for the third consecutive month in a row. I know that this continues to be a difficult time for a lot of Canadians—for our friends, for people in our families, for our neighbours, and for people across our communities.

And our economy will slow as the central bank steps in to tackle inflation.

There will be people whose mortgage payments will rise. Business will no longer be booming in the same way it has since we left our homes after the COVID lockdowns and went back out into the world. Our unemployment rate will no longer be at its record low.

That’s going to be the case in Canada. That will be the case in the United States. And that will be the case in economies big and small around the world.

Now, for the Canadians who need it the most—the most vulnerable among us, those who will feel the bite of rising prices most acutely—our government will be there to provide support.

And we have been—with a doubling of the GST tax credit, with an increase to the Canada Workers Benefit, with a top-up of the Canada Housing Benefit, with dental care for children under 12, and with other important support measures for those among us for whom inflation is making it just impossible to make ends meet.

Just yesterday, the doubling of the GST tax credit received Royal Assent. It’s law now. That means some breathing space will soon be on the way for those who need it most.

All of this support is targeted and it is fiscally responsible. It will not pour unnecessary fuel on the flames of inflation.

And let me also say this. Today, and in the days ahead, we can’t support every single Canadian in the way we did with the emergency measures that we put in place at the height of the pandemic. We cannot compensate every single Canadian for all of the costs of inflation driven by a global pandemic and by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. To do so would only make inflation worse, and would force the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates even higher.

Canadians are smart and I know they understand that.

And so, as we emerge from the pandemic, we are running a tight fiscal ship. We have the lowest debt and the lowest deficit in the G7, and we committed to $9 billion in savings from government spending in the 2022 budget.

Canadians are cutting back on costs, and so, too, is our government. It is how we will do our part to not make inflation worse and more enduring.

There are still some difficult days ahead for Canada’s economy and for the economies of all of our friends and allies around the world. To say otherwise would be misleading. Anyone who claims they could prevent the challenges ahead is just wrong.

But Canada is ready, and we will be ready. Our social safety net will be there—including the Employment Insurance and pensions that Canadians have been contributing to for their whole working lives. And we are ensuring that Canada has and will have the fiscal capacity to support those who need it, today and in the challenging days ahead.

We will get through the economic slowdown that is coming for Canada and the world.

Our fundamental economic strengths will be preserved: our triple-A credit rating, institutional stability and the skilled workers that we are so proud of.

The pandemic will be behind us—and no country in the world will be better placed than Canada to thrive in a post-pandemic global economy.

The future for Canada is bright, if we choose to seize it.

And our government has a plan to ensure we do.

In the Fall Economic Statement, I will lay out some of the steps we will take to seize that brighter future for Canada.

But today, I want to focus on one essential element of that plan.

Last week, I gave a speech about how the global economy is changing in the aftermath of Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine.

I spoke about how the world’s democracies must react to those changes, and about the work we must do together.

The most essential element of our response must be the strengthening of the economic ties between the world’s democracies.

What I described was building on an idea that the US Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, has described as friendshoring—that the world’s democracies must make a conscious effort to build our supply chains through each other’s economies.

Simply put: where democracies must be strategically vulnerable, we should be vulnerable to each other.

Our government believes that this shift represents a generational economic opportunity for Canada and for Canadian workers.

We have the chance to lead the global economy in a way that far exceeds our stature as a country of just 38 million people—to ensure our economy can thrive for generations to come, to make life more affordable, and to create thousands upon thousands upon thousands of new, good-paying jobs.

That is the task that lies ahead of us. That is the future that we can create for ourselves and our children. And here is why I am so confident that we can do it.

First: Canada has what the global economy needs.

We grow food to feed the world, and we mine the potash that our own farmers and farmers elsewhere need to grow their own. We have the critical minerals and metals that are essential for everything from cell phones to electric cars.

We have the auto workers with the expertise to build the cars and trucks that a green global economy will depend on.

We have the natural resources to power the global green transition—the most significant economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution itself—and to support our allies with their energy security as that transition continues to pick up speed.

But second, and critically: we are the democratic economy who has all of these in the greatest abundance.

Our allies and their most important companies are already looking at how they can shift their strategic economic dependence from dictatorships to democracies.

Germany, bracing for a cold winter because of its dependence on Russia for energy, looked to Canada this summer and signed an agreement in Newfoundland for Canadian hydrogen.

The same day that I spoke about friendshoring in Washington, the Prime Minister was in Quebec announcing a $222 million investment alongside Rio Tinto.

That investment will help develop Canada’s critical minerals, provide the resources to help make Canada a leader in EV manufacturing, and supply our allies with the critical strategic resources they need.

And, as I’m sure everyone here is keenly aware, with the Inflation Reduction Act—following months of fierce advocacy by our government, by organized labour, and by business organizations across our country—the US has now moved from a Buy American policy to a Buy North American policy on critical minerals and metals and, of course, electric vehicles.

This historic measure builds on the new NAFTA trade deal. It will help guarantee jobs in the car sector today, and for the generations to come.

Hydrogen. Critical minerals. EVs. These are examples of friendshoring in action—supporting our closest allies while creating good jobs and long-term prosperity for Canadian communities and Canadian workers at the same time.

And as this shift accelerates in the months and years to come, Canada will be ready—with a clean electricity grid, with strong labour and environmental standards, with robust institutions, with the commitment to the rule of law, with our triple-A credit rating. In short, with the safety and stability and values that our allies and their leading businesses, their leading investors, are looking for.

Our government has already been making investments to prepare for this shift, with Canada’s first critical minerals strategy and a Canada Growth Fund that will attract the billions of dollars in new private capital that our economy needs—all of the while creating great jobs for Canadian workers.

Now, we have always been a government that believes in investing in people and in the workers who are the heart of the Canadian economy.

But workers need more than early learning and child care, health care, EI, and the CPP—as important as every single one of these measures is.

What Canadian workers also need—today and in the years to come—is a government with a real muscular industrial policy; a government committed to investing in the green transition, to bringing in private capital alongside us, and to helping to create good-paying jobs from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

Because these kinds of investments in Canadian industries are really at the end of the day about investing in Canadian workers and in investing in jobs for them.

Today and tomorrow, we have an historic opportunity just in front of us to build an economy that will deliver great jobs and prosperity for generations to come.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Canada.

But we are going to have to act to seize it.

And none of us should assume that our success is preordained.

We need to take real action to tackle the productivity challenge that is Canada’s economic Achilles heel, and encourage businesses to grow and invest here in Canada.

We need to make sure that Canadians have the skills that they need for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

We need more of the new Canadians that will help our businesses grow, and we need the strong unions that are fighting for and will continue to fight for the hardworking people who build Canada, who build our economy every day. 

And we need affordable homes, affordable child care, and a resilient social safety net for the middle class and those working hard to join it.

All of this was central to our budget this past April. It will be our continued focus in the Fall Economic Statement. And it will be our priority in the budget that will follow next spring.

We will get through this challenging economic moment. The storm clouds will part and there are brighter days ahead.

And when they do, we must be ready and we will be ready to seize a generational opportunity for Canadians, to seize the prosperity for today and tomorrow that can come with it.

We’ll do it by building an economy that works for everyone. By building a Canada where everyone can earn a decent living for an honest day’s work with a good, middle class job.

We will do it by building a Canada where nobody gets left behind.

Together.

Thank you very much!