Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister on new support for asylum claimants in Toronto

February 2, 2024 - Toronto, ON

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I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat Peoples.

I am so delighted to be here in Toronto today with my friend and colleague Minister Ahmed Hussen, who is here as our local MP of this wonderful community.

I’m really glad to be here with Mayor Chow, and some of her City Council colleagues, and with the amazing people here at COSTI Immigrant Services, who do such remarkable work, and who have been doing it for our community for decades.

I want to start by saying: as a Toronto Member of Parliament, and as a person and as a mother who is really grateful to call this city home, I am really proud of the strong partnership our federal government has been building with the City of Toronto since 2015. And I am really excited about the collaboration that we have, and that is going to get even stronger going forward with Mayor Olivia Chow.

I also want to recognize so many of my caucus colleagues who are here today. This certainly is a meeting of the 416 Toronto caucus, so I hope I’m going to get everybody. We have here:

Yvan Baker, Julie Dzerowicz, Nate Erskine-Smith, Marco Mendicino, Ya’ara Saks, Salma Zahid, Gary Anandasangaree, John McKay, and Arif Virani.

This group of people who are here, are here because we really have been working as a caucus team on our relationship with the City and I am really grateful to be here with so many colleagues who work for their Toronto constituents every single day. And who’ve worked hard to support the announcement that I’m about to make.

I am so glad that our federal government has provided more support for the City of Toronto than any other federal government in Canadian history. Full stop.

Since 2015, our federal government has provided $5.79 billion in direct support to the City of Toronto. In 2023-2024, the current fiscal year alone, the federal government is providing $1.65 billion directly to the City of Toronto. That is money that is flowing right now.

And I think it’s worth reflecting how that compares to the support the City was receiving, or it may be more accurate to say not receiving, in 2015 when we first formed government.

In 2015-2016, Toronto was receiving just $205 million from the federal government. That is quite a delta: $205 million to $1.65 billion.

And the MPs and the Ministers who are here with me believe in that. We believe in Toronto; we believe in working closely with this great city to build it, and to ensure that Torontonians have all the opportunities they need to flourish.

A focus for all of us is housing.

We have already committed over $6 billion for housing to support the people of Toronto. And in fact, this is the second announcement that Samina Sami (CEO, COSTI Immigrant Services) and I have done together in the past three weeks. We were together just a few weeks ago in the Distillery District announcing a mixed-use housing development that has affordable housing fully integrated with market housing.

Samina was there because there are Cost clients already living there. It’s an incredibly beautiful building, and it was really moving for me to know that this building, which is being built in part by federal support, is housing people who have benefited from COSTI’s wrap-around support.

This includes the $471 million Housing Accelerator Fund agreement announced in December, which will fast-track nearly 12,000 new homes in Toronto over the next three years, and more than 53,000 homes over the next decade.

And in November, I announced with the mayor seven major rental housing construction projects being built across Toronto through our Apartment Construction Loan Program, including 2,644 new rental homes. 

We also recognize the absolute importance of public transit for the City of Toronto. That’s why we’ve committed $8.5 billion to Toronto for public transit projects, including funding for new made-in-Canada streetcars. It also includes new electric buses for the TTC, capacity improvements at Bloor-Yonge Station, and funding to build the Ontario Line, the Scarborough Subway Extension, and the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension.

We believe in this city, and we’re here to support the City of Toronto and the people of Toronto. And I’m here to announce that we are providing further support.

The federal government is investing $143 million through the Interim Housing Assistance Program to help Toronto provide housing for asylum seekers.

Thank you again very much to the Toronto MPs and Ministers who have worked so hard to get that support across the line and who advocated for it so effectively.

Today’s announcement is part of the $362.4 million in new funding for the Interim Housing Assistance Program that our Immigration Minister, Marc Miller, announced earlier this week. And it is in addition to the $97 million top-up our government announced to the IHAP program for the City of Toronto last July.

Taken together, this support means that the City of Toronto will receive $240 million through the Interim Housing Assistance Program this fiscal year alone.

And it means, critically, that more newcomers will have a safe and stable place to call home while they get settled in Canada—so that amazing organizations like COSTI can continue the outstanding and essential work they do.

Our government is committed to supporting the most vulnerable among us—and that includes people who are struggling with the high cost of rent.

That is why today, I am also announcing that the federal government is providing $19.75 million to the City of Toronto through the Canada Housing Benefit.

We know that a lot of people are struggling to pay the rent. Vacancy rates are really low, and rents are really high, so this additional support is going to help the most vulnerable people pay their rent every month.

Together, the investments we are announcing today represent over $162 million in additional support for the City of Toronto. And critically for me, it’s for the most vulnerable people in this city. It’s to help people seeking asylum here, and it’s to help people who are really struggling to pay their rent.

Toronto, our amazing city, is such a key driver of Canada’s economic success, and it is central to our government’s economic plan.

I know things are really challenging for so many people right now. But there is some good news.

Our economic plan is working.

Inflation in December was down to 3.4 per cent, and that number is 2.5 per cent if you exclude mortgage costs. And it is down from a peak of 8.1 per cent.

Critically, wage growth has outpaced inflation for the past 11 months in a row, and private sector economists are predicting that Canada will avoid the recession that a lot of people thought was inevitable when COVID first hit, and our economy contracted.

Today, there are more than one million more people working in Canada compared to before the pandemic.

And those strong jobs numbers are one of the most important things for me.

The COSTI office we’re in right now, we’ve learned, its main job is providing employment services to newcomers, helping them get a job. And I think we all know—whether you are a new Canadian or someone born here—getting a good job is key to having a good life to be able to provide for yourself and your family.

That strong job market, with more than a million more jobs since the pandemic, helps the people at COSTI do the work they do here to help newcomers find a job. There needs to be a job market to support those people to enter, so I really want to emphasize how important job creation is to our economic plan, and how focused we are on it.

This week, we got another encouraging statistic: according to Statistics Canada estimates, the Canadian economy grew by 1.5 per cent in 2023, and that’s significantly higher than people have been expecting.

So, our government is investing in Toronto. We know this is a wonderful city, and we know we need to keep on investing to make it even better.

I and all of my colleagues here really look forward to continuing to work with the City of Toronto, to work with Toronto’s wonderful mayor, Olivia Chow, to keep building this great city, and to ensure that together, we can build the city that the people of Toronto need, deserve, and expect.   

Thank you very much for all being here today.