It’s a great pleasure to be here with David Myles, who hopefully will sing later on and entertain us, Wayne Long, Secretary of State of Finance, and Dominic LeBlanc, who is many things including our Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, responsible for negotiations internationally, and a colleague above and beyond.

I'd like to thank Chris, Erika, and Bill for hosting us here at Maple Leaf Homes, welcoming us, but also for what you've been doing, and I'm going to expand a bit on this. Let me start by just acknowledging that their team, the team here at Maple Leaf Homes, has been building for over three decades, and it's a story that started in building homes for mining camps in the far north, a place where, I know well and they know well, the cold conditions and the short construction seasons make traditional home-building difficult. So, what they did is they started to build homes indoors in controlled conditions, with the precision and strength required to withstand the harsh elements in the north.

And that same ingenuity is very much alive here, at your facilities in Fredericton. You are refining your craft in the manufacturing of factory-built homes. With state-of-the-art machinery, the latest technology, and local talent, you are building more homes, faster, that are more energy efficient and affordable for Canadians.

At this facility, construction is active 22 hours a day, uses softwood lumber from across the Atlantic provinces, from Quebec, British Columbia, New Brunswick-made kitchens which we just tested out, fully endorse them, and engineered wood from Quebec. Maple Leaf Homes builds energy-efficient apartments, schools, remote camps, and hundreds of homes every year. We need more of them. Once completed, these housing units are shipped as far west as Manitoba, as far north to Nunavut. 

You are demonstrating once again that Canadian manufacturers can be leaders in quality and craftsmanship. Congratulations on what you have built and all that you will continue to build.

Now, Canada's new government is deploying a similar combination of innovation, speed, and long hours through Build Canada Homes. Build Canada Homes is a new entity. It leverages federal public lands, a large portfolio of projects, highly-competitive financing to help create scale in a new factory-built housing industry that can help Canada build millions more of affordable homes. This is an industry that can cut building times by 50%, reduce costs by 20%, and lower emissions by a further 20%.

And it's consistent with Canada's history. Our history is one of adventurers, risk-takers, and above all, builders. Our country was forged by Indigenous peoples and voyagers who built vast trading networks from coast to coast to coast before the Americans had even left St. Louis. Following the Second World War, Canada was ambitious, determined, and united in a mission to build big things, that would include the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Trans-Canada Highway, Expo 67, and the CN Tower. But Canadians also built new neighbourhoods, new neighbourhoods for hundreds of thousands of returning veterans, and we expanded our universities such as UNB. UNB saw its enrollment almost double.

At this hinge moment, it is this history as builders that we need to return to, and that we need to encourage.

Because Canada is facing a hinge moment. The world's more divided and dangerous. The global trading system is being re-wired, threatening Canadian jobs and businesses. The budget released last week, it estimates that U.S. tariffs and the uncertainty that they're costing Canadians represents around 1.8% of our GDP. Let me translate that, that's about $50 billion lost from our economy, the equivalent of $1300 for every Canadian.

And this is happening fast. It's a rupture, not a transition, and it means that our economic strategy needs to change just as dramatically and rapidly. That new strategy, that new strategy is at the core of Canada's new federal budget. The budget builds Canada Strong by unleashing over $1 trillion in total investments in Canada over the next five years. Those investments alone will increase Canada's GDP by over three-and-a-half percent. Again, let me translate, g=that's $3500 for every Canadian worker, more than twice of what the Americans are taking from us, and we are just getting started.

Budget 2025 is the new economic strategy that Canada needs to meet this challenge and emerge even stronger. A Canada that is confident and taking its future into its own hands. To get there, we must tackle long-standing economic pressures that go beyond tariffs.

Our budget makes generational investments to build at home, including right here in New Brunswick. Budget 2025 includes a new $5 billion Trade Diversification Corridors Fund which will improve Canada's access to international markets by investing in new airport and railway infrastructure, and that means projects such as the Saint John Trade Corridor and the critical minerals port at Port of Belledune. We're building one Canadian economy turbo-charged by new infrastructure that connects our regions, diversifies our markets, makes us an energy superpower, restores affordability to housing, and secures our community.

We are creating new strategies — from critical minerals to high-speed rail and a sovereign cloud — to drive tens of billions of dollars in further investments, while creating the conditions for a better connected, more productive economy. Our new Defence Industrial Strategy will help leverage the over $80 billion increase in defence spending over the next five years to build Canadian industry.

Our Climate Competitiveness Strategy will help drive hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in nuclear, hydro, wind, storage and grid infrastructure to position Canada to lead in the low-carbon economy. We will build local infrastructure, including hospitals, transit, recreation spaces, and arts centres, through the $50 billion Build Communities Strong Fund.

This includes new funding to build Place Marcel-François-Richard, a gathering place to celebrate Acadian culture on the site of the giant Acadian flag in Beaurivage, New Brunswick. And I believe Mr. LeBlanc announced it last Sunday. Right? Saturday, last Saturday.

Now, we're going to build, but it's not just about what we build, it's also how we build; and that's what I want to focus for the balance of my remarks. We're going to build inclusively in full partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. We will build in solidarity with workers, creating good union jobs. We will build sustainably because reducing emissions isn't just a moral duty, it's an economic imperative. And above all, we will build Canadian by becoming our own best customer. With our new Buy Canadian policy, whenever the federal government spends, we will select Canadian suppliers by default rather than using the current best efforts approach, and this approach, this new approach, will extend to all federal agencies, all Crown corporations such as Build Canada Homes, such as Alto high-speed rail, and such as our spending from our new Defence Investment Agency. 

Our Buy Canadian policy will include federal infrastructure spending, ensuring that as much as possible of that $70 billion we're planning to invest in the roads, bridges, and community centres on which Canadians rely comes from Canadian-made suppliers. And in those cases when domestic suppliers aren't available, purchases will be required to include Canadian content or to be sourced from trusted partners, and those cases will be the exception, not the norm, and they will require ministerial approval.

To be considered a Canadian supplier, companies will have to have a physical presence in Canada and in Canadian supply chains — not just a shell company.

Now, being our own best customer will put more of every public dollar back into our economy, creating good Canadian jobs, Canadian careers, using Canadian resources, and benefitting Canadian communities. It’ll make a big difference for workers here in New Brunswick, including at businesses like Maple Leaf Homes.

When an order is placed for steel, lumber, or heavy machinery, it will go to businesses in Saskatoon, Trois-Rivières, and Fredericton. These new orders for homes, buildings, and defence equipment will turn into contracts, careers, and better wages for Canadian workers. 

Now, for smaller businesses, we're also launching a new procurement program that provides specialized streamlined support for those Canadian small and medium-sized businesses that are trying to break into the federal market. This is good for everyone. It’ll improve competition for Canadian contracts, it’ll strengthen local supply chains, and it will build our industries from construction to energy, technology, and clean manufacturing.

We will give our businesses the confidence they need to invest in their development and growth. We will be our own best customer so that new welding and engineering graduates have high-quality careers waiting for them here in Canada. Canada’s new government is making this announcement, but it is part of a larger movement that every Canadian, in their own way, is driving forward.

Canadians are buying more local wines – for example, in Quebec, where sales of local wine rose by nearly 60%. Early this year, our government removed federal barriers to internal trade, and the provincial and territorial premiers have started removing their barriers as well. This will unlock billions more dollars in trade within our borders.

Our Buy Canadian strategy is part of a larger movement amongst Canadian businesses, a movement that's putting maple leaf stickers on grocery aisles, a movement that's increasing sales and coupons for Canadian-made products, and a movement that's choosing Canadian suppliers for new contracts. And one implication of Buy Canadian is that we need a more unified Canadian economy than ever, so the federal government is leading the effort to remove internal barriers so that Canadian products and services can flow easily across the country.

Our plan is ambitious and bold. It is exactly what our country needs. 

Now, and conclude and just observe, these challenges are broad, and there's two potential responses to the challenges that we face as a country, and the first is to stick to the plans designed for the old world, hunker down, slash the deficit, and wait for the trickle down, but in order to do that would mean getting rid of our key social programs or the federal government eliminating all the health, education, and social transfers that we make to the provinces and territories, and at the same time not making these big investments in what we need right now. But we choose a different path, to invest boldly in our future, just as Canadians have done in the past. We choose Canada.

We are masters of our own house, and we will build a country that is greater and stronger than ever. And we will do it with Canadian lumber, Canadian steel and Canadian aluminum. This is our country. This is your future. With Budget 2025, we are taking back control to build Canada strong.

With Budget 2025, we’ll build Canadian, build New Brunswick strong, build Canada strong. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And long live Canada.