Toronto, ON | Nov. 5, 2025 – WoodGreen Community Services welcomes the federal government’s Canada Strong Budget 2025, and its investments and commitments related to affordable housing, immigration, youth programs, employment and community care.
We are encouraged by the federal government’s recognition of the vital role PSWs play in community care. “Personal support workers are the backbone of home and community care services. It’s great to see the government propose a refundable tax credit that WoodGreen PSWs will be eligible to access,” said Dorothy Quon, VP of Community Care, following Tuesday’s budget release. “WoodGreen continues to focus on making life more affordable for its workers, including building workforce housing. We appreciate any taxable benefit that helps make life easier and more affordable for our staff.”
WoodGreen is pleased to see the federal government invest in programs that address employment barriers for youth. We are proud to support youth through a number of programs, including after-school activities, tutoring, sports, counselling, and youth employment training. We are also encouraged to see prioritized funding towards the YESS and an additional investment in Canada Summer Jobs.
Canada’s youth are facing the most difficult labour market in over a decade and youth unemployment continues to rise. To reverse these trends, WoodGreen calls on the federal government to consider expansion of the Canada Summer Jobs Program to a year-round access model where youth can gain meaningful work experience beyond the summer months to allow fall and winter placements aligned with school schedules.
WoodGreen supports providing newcomers a successful pathway to permanent residency and settlement in Canada and looks forward to reviewing further details of the release of the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels plan. WoodGreen supports proposals to accelerate the transition of up to 33,000 work permit holders to permanent residency in 2026 and 2027 and recognize eligible Protected Persons in Canada as permanent residents over the same period. However, we also continue to call on the federal government to withdraw Bill C-12, which provides severe restrictions and disciplinary measures to further constrain newcomers from transitioning into Canada.
We applaud the federal government’s investment of $115 billion over five years in infrastructure. With this recent commitment, we look positively towards the government’s continuous commitment to scale more affordable and supportive housing through Build Canada Homes (BCH) and look forward to advancing the work of BCH to build more affordable homes in Toronto and across Canada. BCH’s interest in building non-market affordable units and mixed-income developments is encouraging for non-profit developers. However, WoodGreen continues to stress the importance of funding existing Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC) programs in the short-term to ensure current projects are not stalled, delayed or cancelled.
While September’s announcement of $1.5 billion in loans for the Affordable Housing Fund (AHF) was critical in continuing to provide financing for affordable housing projects, we are discouraged to see that Budget 2025 has not forecasted any additional investment for the AHF over the next three years. While commitments by BCH are promising, WoodGreen still continues to call for more transitional funding of existing programs in the interim.
Overall, many Budget 2025 commitments are a significant step forward in helping vulnerable populations in Canada. We are committed to advancing these priorities in collaboration with the federal government to ensure we can enhance self-sufficiency, empower vulnerable people and reduce poverty through innovative solutions.
ABOUT WOODGREEN COMMUNITY SERVICES (woodgreen.org): WoodGreen is one of the largest social service agencies in Toronto, serving 40,000 people each year. We offer over 75 programs and services tackling the social determinants that affect the health and well-being of individuals in our community.
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For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact: For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact: Jon Reed, Senior Communications Manager; [email protected];.