Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s Minister of Housing, Diversity and Inclusion, said in an interview this week that the Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative (SBCCI), introduced in 2019, is a program of which “our government is very proud.”

Hussen, told The Caribbean Camera that the Initiative has been “well received across the country.”    

“It is something that the community brought forward. They said that we need a program that will fund the capacity building and infrastructure needs of Black Canadian nonprofits and charities. So we started that program and over the years, it has been investing tens of millions of dollars,” he said.

Discussing the recently tabled 2023 Federal Budget, Hussen noted that one of the three main themes is the “grocery rebate.”

“This will deliver much-needed support to families and individuals to meet the higher cost of groceries,” he said.

The second theme is “the record amount of investments to the tune of over $194 billion over the next number of years in our public health care system.”

“This is money,” he said, “that will go to reinforce our public health care system, hire more family doctors, hire more nurses as well as introduce more innovation into the system.

“For example, making it easier for different medical professionals to access patient records so that when a patient moves seamlessly throughout the health care system, it’s easier to do so with better data management.

“And the third main aspect is about making sure that we’re investing in the economy of tomorrow – making sure that we’re investing in the clean economy and producing good well-paying middle class jobs in the process.”