Minister Fortier meets with Mayor Helps of Victoria

August 9, 2021

Last Friday, the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance, Mona Fortier spoke virtually with Her Worship Lisa Helps, the Mayor of Victoria, and city officials.

Minister Fortier and Mayor Helps discussed Canada’s draft Quality of Life Framework that was introduced in Budget 2021 to integrate quality of life considerations into decision-making. The framework provides a guide for moving beyond one set of well-being indicators – such as GDP – to look at Canadians’ quality of life in five domains – prosperity, health, environment, society and good governance. In addition to this sort of multi-dimensional thinking, the framework emphasizes inclusive and long-term thinking.

The Minister sought input on the discussion paper released alongside Budget 2021 and specifically Mayor Helps’ views on refining the indicators in the framework to better assess quality of life by ensuring that a broad range of factors are used to guide policy decisions in Canada.

Mayor Helps was pleased to see an emphasis on subjective well-being included in the Quality of Life discussion paper. She also highlighted the need to include attitudes toward climate change and climate anxiety within the subjective well-being indicator. Minister Fortier and Mayor Helps both emphasized that data sharing is key to helping municipalities make good, evidence-based policy decisions that improve the quality of life for all residents. Finally, Mayor Helps underscored the importance of investments in affordable housing and homelessness, especially as it relates to Victoria and British Columbia’s Indigenous communities.

Minister Fortier indicated that the feedback from this meeting, as well as other meetings, would be used to refine the framework, which will remain evergreen to ensure its continued relevance in measuring what matters for a good quality of life in Canada.

Minister Fortier also took the opportunity to discuss continued challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the work done by municipal governments to spearhead the country’s economic recovery. Canada entered the pandemic in a strong fiscal position, which has allowed the government to take quick and decisive action, support people and businesses, and make historic investments in the recovery.