Budget 2026: Key Measures

Backgrounder

Budget 2026: Masters of our destiny builds on Canada’s strengths to create a stronger, more independent, more competitive, and more affordable economy. It is a plan for growth that puts people at its heart and strengthens Canada’s sovereignty and unity. 

It accelerates investment, builds on Canada’s energy and natural resource advantage, and helps Canadians get ahead. It invests in our communities, culture and natural heritage, advances reconciliation, and strengthens our sovereignty and security. And it does so with the fiscal discipline needed to build a stronger Canada for the future. 

Budget 2026 catalyses growth:

• Canada Strong Notes: Allowing Canadians to invest directly in the $25 billion Canada Strong Fund and gain a stake in nation-building projects. 
• Canada Growth Incentive: Helping high-potential businesses attract investment, scale and keep more capital in Canada, through a new tax exemption on up to $15 million in capital gains from eligible investments and an enhanced small business rollover. 
• Major Projects: Fully funding the Mackenzie Valley Highway, an 800 km all-season road in the Northwest Territories, and creating an entity with the expertise and resources to deliver major projects such as the Mackenzie Valley Highway and Taltson Hydro Expansion projects. 
• Productivity Mega Deduction: Strengthening Canada’s tax competitiveness by lowering the marginal effective tax rate on new business investment from 13% to 6.4%, encouraging businesses to invest, expand and increase productivity. 
• Invest in Canada: Expanding Invest in Canada to support its leadership role in investment attraction and delivering future Canada Investment Summits. 
• Scientific Research and Experimental Development Expansion: Investing $930 million to expand the SR&ED tax incentive program to include certain commercialisation expenses, helping Canadian businesses develop and bring to market new technologies. 
• Power Canada Strong – National Electricity Strategy: Investing over $50 billion to support the goal of doubling electricity grid capacity by 2050 to meet growing demand, while accelerating electrification.   
• Nuclear Energy: Investing $518.5 million in the Nuclear Energy Strategy to strengthen domestic supply chains and Canada’s position as a global energy superpower. 
• Canada’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure: Investing just over $634 million to make it easier and more convenient for Canadians to drive electric vehicles, including by supporting over 55,000 additional electric vehicle chargers in areas where the infrastructure is needed most. 
• Critical Minerals: Investing $2.3 billion in the Critical Minerals Strategy to promote domestic production and processing capacity and strengthen Canada’s economic resilience. 
• Forest Sector Transformation Strategy: Providing $6.5 billion over six years, on a cash basis, to transform Canada’s forest sector by strengthening fibre supply, modernizing facilities and boosting productivity, and supporting new large-scale projects and major transformations of existing facilities, from biorefineries and biofuel facilities to other facilities producing innovative forest products. 

Budget 2026 Delivers for People: 

• 2027 Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Supplement: Introducing a one-time 50% increase for the 2026-27 benefit year delivered in early 2027, providing up to $339 for a single person without children and up to $679 for a couple with two children. 
• Nutrition North Canada: Expanding and stabilising funding for Nutrition North Canada and associated initiatives to lower the cost of imported foods and support local food harvesting and distribution initiatives in remote northern communities. 
• Refundable Canada Caregiver Credit: Supporting caregivers who help people in need remain in their homes and communities with a fully refundable tax credit that could lift 15,000 individuals out of poverty. Caregivers would receive up to $1,260 annually (for 2027, indexed thereafter).
• Building the homes Canada needs: Investing $44.7 billion over 11 years on a cash basis to put Canada on a path to end homelessness within 10 years, expand non-market housing, and build a housing market that works for all. 
• Mental health and home and community care: Providing $1.2 billion in 2027-28 to extend federal funding agreements with the provinces and territories for mental health and addictions services and home and community care, helping Canadians access support, regardless of their ability to pay.
• Build Canada Workers Benefit: Introducing the Build Canada Workers Benefit to keep more money in workers’ pockets. Altogether, the enhanced benefit would help lift an estimated 240,000 people out of poverty. 
• National Heat Pump Rebate: Investing more than $2 billion to help up to 820,000 households switch to heat pumps. Together with other measures to improve energy efficiency, including retrofits in multi-unit residential buildings, these investments are projected to save Canadians more than $1 billion a year on energy bills once fully implemented. 
• More affordable mortgages: Establishing new regulations to enhance publicly available information on insured mortgage rates, allowing more Canadians to compare and shop for the best available rates. 
• Tax simplification: Launching the most ambitious effort in a generation to improve Canada’s tax system, making it easier for Canadians to file, claim, and access the tax relief and benefits they are entitled to. 

Budget 2026 strengthens Canada’s sovereignty and unity: 

• Canada 160 Fund: Celebrating Canada’s 160th anniversary with a $300 million flagship initiative that brings together the stories, spaces and experiences that strengthen national pride and unity.
• Canada Creative Credit: Establishing the creation of a new form of tax relief for Canadian artists to foster creativity, artistic production, and cultural entrepreneurship in Canada.
• Funding for CBC/Radio-Canada: Providing $300 million over two years to Canada’s national public broadcaster to strengthen its capacity to meet the evolving needs of Canadians across the country. 
• Support for audio and audiovisual sectors: Investing $600 million in immediate support to provide greater stability for creators, producers, and broadcasters, helping build a more sustainable cultural ecosystem.
• Canadian stories: Helping Canadian creators produce the stories that reflect who we are and making them easier to discover, including through a free national digital collection of Canadian books and $20 million over four years, plus $5 million ongoing, for the Canada Book Fund. 
• Support for local journalism: Providing $134 million over four years, starting in 2027-28, and $41 million ongoing to support independent and diverse local news organisations across the country. 
• Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit: Extending the Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit to qualifying private audio and audiovisual news organisations, in line with support provided to news organisations that produce written news. 
• Recreational facilities and ice rinks: Investing $1.5 billion over nine years through the Build Communities Strong Fund to expand, retrofit and rehabilitate recreational facilities and ice rinks across Canada, creating more spaces for Canadians to come together, play and compete. 
• Canada Strong Pass and free national museums: Renewing the Canada Strong Pass for another summer and making national museums permanently free for children and youth under 25. 
• Francophone culture: Strengthening Canada’s Francophone identity and institutions through hosting the 2028 Francophonie Summit. 
• Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples: Providing historic investments of more than $50 billion over 10 years to advance reconciliation and ensure Indigenous Peoples have long-term predictable funding in core programs. This includes $32 billion over 10 years for First Nations housing and infrastructure and more than $18 billion over 6 years to support Indigenous education and skills training, health and community safety, support for children and families, and emergency management.
• Canada’s natural heritage: Investing $3.6 billion to preserve infrastructure in Canada’s national parks, national marine conservation areas, and national historic sites. 
• Defence and sovereignty: Building on Canada’s achievement of NATO’s 2% of GDP defence spending target, with investments in the Defence Industrial Strategy and the Defence Drone Initiative, we are on track to spend 4% of GDP on defence this decade and reach 5% of GDP by 2035.   
• Operation REASSURANCE: Providing $7.6 billion over five years to extend and expand Operation REASSURANCE, Canada’s largest overseas mission to deter Russian aggression on NATO’s Eastern Flank and fortify our shared European defence. 
• Security at home and abroad: Expanding the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s capabilities and presence to better protect Canadians from national security threats and reduce reliance on foreign partners. 
• National Field of Honour: Acquiring, remediating and operating the National Field of Honour in Pointe-Claire, Québec and commemorating defining moments in Canada’s military history to preserve the legacy of our veterans. 
• Support for Canadian Armed Forces members and their families: Providing $25 million over two years for the Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services to support the members of the Canadian Armed Forces, their families and local communities affected by the tragic incident at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright. Also investing $3 million to support the Wainwright Military Family Resource Centre.
• Safer online spaces for all: Providing funding to establish the new Digital Safety and Data Protection Commission of Canada to work towards creating a safer online space for Canadians, particularly children. 
• Safe communities at home: Providing funding to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence. 
• Artificial intelligence and quantum: Strengthening Canadian leadership in AI through Canada’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, AI for All, and launching phase two of the Canadian Quantum Champions Program to build Canada’s sovereign capabilities in frontier technologies. 
• Emergency preparedness and resilience: Bolstering Canada’s ability to prepare for and respond to natural disasters and other emergencies, including through a new commitment of up to $2.5 billion in financing to De Havilland Canada to increase waterbomber production capacity and expand aerial firefighting capacity.