Canada’s 2021 Budget Addresses Trade, Infrastructure
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland released Canada’s 2021 budget outline last week, promising more than $100 billion in new investments to help the nation recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Daily Commercial News reported, Freeland and Trudeau pledged significant new resources to expand affordable housing, retrofit homes, invest in broadband and a green infrastructure development, and build new public transit.
National Post’s Tristin Hopper noted that, like their U.S. counterparts, the Canadian government is taking a broad view of what infrastructure is. Hopper writes, “Ottawa will no longer be constrained by the i-word only referring to stuff such as bridges and railways. ‘Child care is essential social infrastructure,’ reads a description of the new plan for a federal child-care strategy,” for example.
The budget also addressed international and domestic trade matters, including:
- Calling for public consultations to strengthen Canada’s trade remedy system as it relates to small and medium-sized enterprises;
- Clarifying the selection process for trade remedy dispute panels under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Implementation Act;
- Investing $87.4 million over five years to modernize the federal procurement system and diversify the federal supplier base; and
- Providing $21 million over the next three years to “accelerate the reduction of trade barriers” within Canada.