London, Ontario - 24 November 2014
Thank you very much.
Thank you for that warm welcome.
It's always great to be back here in London.
As Ed Holder says every time, the tenth-largest city in Canada.
I want to begin by thanking all of my colleagues, Susan Truppe, our MP for London-North Centre, for emceeing this event.
Also Joe Preston here for Elgin-Middlesex-London.
Thank you, colleagues.
Give all my colleagues, Ed Holder as well, give them all a big hand.
Also, I want to thank Amit as well, President of Western, for hosting us here today at this impressive Collider Centre For Technological Commercialization.
We look forward to doing some tours later.
Greetings as well to Your Worships, past or present and future.
Present and future.
It's a pleasure to see everyone here today.
Just before coming here, I visited London's branch of the National Research Council, the facility there.
For almost 100 years the NRC has been the Government of Canada's premier research and development organization.
And let's all congratulate the NRC employees who are with us today for their dedication to Canada's advancement and prosperity.
Glad they could come.
You at the NRC are a big part of the success of our economy, of the progress of our communities, and of the well-being of our families.
And the London establishment I visited is about cutting-edge science.
It's about keeping Canada innovative, competitive; competitive with the best in the world and creating new jobs and opportunities.
This establishment is also a good example of federal infrastructure, the vast network of buildings and facilities that serve Canadians in so many ways right across the country.
Infrastructure is also ports and border crossings, bridges and wharves, laboratories and water treatment plants.
In other words, the things that move goods, provide services, and enhance quality of life for all of us.
In a very real sense, Canada's federal infrastructure creates jobs.
Just as a government we work hard to sign new trade agreements, some of which Ed talked about.
As well, we work hard to cut taxes in order to create jobs and stimulate growth and economic opportunities, so we know we must also continue as a government to invest in our vital assets to keep our economy moving forward.
Infrastructure is the cornerstone literally in that sense of economic success.
That's why our Government has invested in so much of it; in fact why we have been making, as a government, as a federal government, the largest national infrastructure investments ever in the history of our country.
In 2007, we began with the original Building Canada Plan.
Two years later, we made further investments, we doubled – some of the municipalities will remember this – we doubled the gas tax fund, the major transfer to Canadian municipalities.
In 2013, we indexed that transfer and we made it permanent.
And with our Government's assurance of long-term funding Canadian municipalities have been able to build and revitalize their own public works, creating jobs and opportunity locally, locally in the process.
Then in Economic Action Plan 2013, our Government announced the longest and largest commitment ever in Canadian history to building our country's economic foundation, and that is the new Building Canada Plan.
This is a commitment of roughly 53 billion dollars in contributions to provincial, territorial, and community infrastructure projects: roads, buildings and installations of all kinds.
These projects have and will generate tens of thousands of jobs.
They already have generated tens of thousands of new jobs to date and the Canada, new Building Canada Plan is going to generate even more as we move forward.
These are skilled, well-paying jobs for hard-working Canadians.
Now as you know, Minister Oliver recently, Minister of Finance recently announced that we remain on track.
In fact, we are ahead of track in terms of balancing the federal budget next year.
This gives us flexibility to make additional investments ahead of schedule in a wide range of necessary federal infrastructure projects.
So I am pleased to announce today that our Government will undertake close to six billion dollars in additional infrastructure investment, most of that over the next three years, and it is going to be in projects all across the country.
So let me give you some examples.
Very broadly, we will be upgrading border facilities.
We will invest in airports and rail service, in small craft harbours and in shipbuilding yards.
We will be modernizing federal laboratories and research centres such as the one I visited earlier today.
We will be upgrading National Defence and RCMP facilities as we continue to support the men and women in uniform who keep us safe from coast to coast to coast.
We will also be restoring national historic sites and improving museums, parks and marine conservation areas.
The full range of projects is simply too numerous for me to list here today.
But let me for a moment highlight a science and technology program called Factory of the Future that involves the National Research Council.
Around the world the manufacturing industry as we all know is changing radically.
The factories of the future will be known for their efficiency, frugality, flexibility and intelligence.
To maintain our global position, Canadian manufacturers are under enormous pressure to innovate.
As they do so they look to our Government and organizations like the NRC to help support them.
This expectation is especially true in industries like the automotive and aerospace sectors but it is by no means confined to those.
I'm therefore pleased to announce that we shall build a new NRC facility in Winnipeg and we will be expanding our facilities in Montreal and the one right here in London.
As part of the Factory of the Future program, this expansion in London will allow NRC employees to fully participate in this important initiative.
You will be working on new manufacturing methods with significant potential for spill-over to a large number of industrial sectors.
Now I know we all like to think of our work as having significance.
At the NRC you should have no doubt about that.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, let me just close with this.
The projects I'm announcing today have been specifically selected and designed with two things in mind.
First, these projects will deliver needed improvements to our federal assets and to our communities reasonably quickly.
Second, from coast to coast to coast, in big cities and in smaller centres these investments will provide jobs for Canadians now and better opportunities for the future.
That is as it should be because in a few years, just a few years' time, as you know, we will be celebrating Confederation's 150th anniversary.
I believe we are going to look back at that time on a century and a half of hard work, sacrifice and remarkable achievement.
Those Canadians who came before us built a proud country, a progressive country, a strong country, truly the best in the world.
This is our inheritance.
And our Government will be proud to build on that foundation by adding the significant investments I'm announcing today.
And through these investments, your work at the National Research Centre will be of immediate benefit to this generation and a further investment for the generations to come.
So do good work with all of that money.
Thank you very much.
