Hon. Andrew Cardozo: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate.

First, I want to quote from a column by David Coletto of Abacus Data in The Hill Times:

Parliament and the federal government need to find ways to instill confidence in Canadians that there is a clear economic strategy in place to create wealth, grow the economy, and secure their future.

To be fair, on some indicators, the economy is doing well with the reduction of inflation — announced at a low of 2% today — the reduction in the Bank of Canada interest rate and a consistent affordability agenda covering tax rates, pensions, national child care and dental care.

However, the housing crisis is worsening. The overall unemployment rate is inching up, while the rate for youth unemployment is more worrisome.

Focusing on the issue of confidence, what are the government’s top priorities that speak to increasing the confidence that Canadians will have in their economy?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): The government is focused on boosting productivity by investing in the technologies, incentives and supports critical to increasing innovation, attracting more private investment to Canada and investing in our people and workforce. These include improving access to training and re-skilling programs for our workforce with increased funding for Youth Employment and Skills Strategy programs; $207.6 million for student work placement programs; investing $2 billion to launch a new AI Compute Access Fund and Canadian AI Sovereign Compute Strategy to help Canadian researchers and start-ups access the computational power they need to compete and scale up; allowing businesses to write off the full cost of investments in patents and data processing equipment; building on past reforms to the Competition Act, which will lead to a more productive economy; and delivering a $93-billion suite of major tax credits to give the clean economy a boost.

Hon. Andrew Cardozo: Senator Gold, I would like to drill down on two economic issues, namely housing and immigration.

While the housing crisis and shortage has been growing over the last couple of decades, there are some who believe the increase in immigration, especially over the last couple of years, to be the sole reason for the problem with housing.

Could you share your views on the relationship between immigration and housing? What is the government doing with regard to the housing crisis we face?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Time doesn’t allow me to elaborate on everything the government is doing in both of those areas or their complicated interrelationship, but you are right to point out there are some.

There have been changes — you are all aware of them — announced in our immigration protocols and procedures, as well as major continuing investments in the housing sector. These are designed to increase the stock of housing and reduce the pressure on it.