Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1

I'll provide a plain-language summary of this budget implementation bill.

This bill puts into law many of the tax and spending measures announced in the November 2025 federal budget. On personal taxes, it raises the lifetime capital gains exemption to $1.25 million, exempts the new Canada Disability Benefit from being counted as taxable income, expands what counts under the Disability Supports Deduction, and creates a new tax credit for personal support workers. It also gives a break on capital gains when someone sells a business to their employees (through an employee ownership trust) or to a worker cooperative, and it extends a longer deadline for claiming charitable donations made in the 2024 tax year.

For businesses, the bill enhances the SR&ED research and development tax credit program by raising spending limits and bringing back eligibility for capital expenditures, extends mining exploration tax credits, restores accelerated write-offs for business investments and rental housing construction, and expands clean electricity, clean technology, and carbon capture tax credits to cover more projects including certain natural gas and nuclear facilities. It reforms Canada's transfer pricing rules (which govern how multinational companies price transactions between their own related entities) and tightens rules around trust reporting and synthetic financial arrangements used to avoid tax.

On consumer and administrative measures, the bill repeals the Digital Services Tax and ends the Underused Housing Tax and the luxury tax on aircraft and boats. It creates a new "open banking" style law (the Consumer-Driven Banking Act) letting Canadians securely share their financial data between banks and other approved companies of their choosing. It also allows First Nations to opt into collecting their own sales tax on things like fuel and tobacco on their lands, and establishes a legal framework to build a high-speed rail line between Quebec and Ontario, including special rules for approvals and property expropriation. Finally, it makes numerous other changes: increasing how much the government can borrow, boosting funding for the Canada Infrastructure Bank and a new "Build Canada Homes" program, adjusting veterans' and public service pension rules, and tightening food, fuel, and financial regulations in various ways.

This bill creates a national framework for consumer-driven banking, a Consumer-Driven Banking Act, a Digital Services Tax repeal, a High-Speed Rail Network Act, a Canada Development Investment Corporation Act, a National School Food Program Act, a Stablecoin Act, and amendments to over forty other federal statutes covering tax, financial institutions, aviation, environmental review, immigration-adjacent student aid, and expropriation powers.

• New bodies and offices — the Bank of Canada gains supervisory, accreditation, and enforcement powers over "participating entities" (banks, financial institutions, payment providers) and third-party service providers under the Consumer-Driven Banking Act; the Governor in Council may designate an external complaints body and a technical standards body; a new Canada Development Investment Corporation is continued with a board appointed by the Governor in Council; the Minister of Housing may designate entities to receive Build Canada Homes funding.
• Ministerial and Bank discretion — the Minister of Finance can issue directives forcing the Bank of Canada to refuse or revoke accreditation for "reasons related to national security," a term left undefined in the text; the Bank of Canada can suspend or revoke accreditation, impose conditions, and demand information from applicants, with limited appeal rights to the Governor or Federal Court; ministers under the Red Tape Reduction Act can exempt named entities from provisions of most federal statutes (excluding a list of "excluded Acts") for up to three years, renewable to six, to facilitate innovation or economic growth.
• Expropriation and property powers — the High-Speed Rail Network Act deems certain rail construction pre-approved under the Canada Transportation Act, exempts most of the network from full Impact Assessment Act review, creates a statutory right of first refusal and work-prohibition notice regime over private land, and applies the Expropriation Act with modified procedures (no requirement to first attempt purchase, shortened objection periods) for lands the Corporation needs.
• Financial institution changes — the Superintendent of Financial Institutions receives clarified powers to compel compliance with integrity/security policies and to issue directions on unsafe practices; public-holding equity thresholds double from $2 billion to $4 billion; banks may deliver governance documents electronically without consent (paper on request); federally regulated credit unions gain amalgamation and vehicle-leasing powers.
• Penalties and enforcement — the Consumer-Driven Banking Act creates an administrative monetary penalty regime with violations, notices, and Federal Court appeal; the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act amendments raise maximum penalties and add a parallel administrative monetary penalty scheme; the Aeronautics Act amendments modernize and increase administrative penalty and fine ceilings and add vicarious liability for air traffic service providers.
• Oversight mechanisms present — annual reports to Parliament on Red Tape Reduction Act exemptions, mandatory five- and ten-year statutory reviews of the Farm Credit Canada Act, and Federal Court appeal rights for accreditation refusals/revocations under the Consumer-Driven Banking Act; no sunset clause applies to the core new powers themselves (only individual exemption orders are time-limited).
• Confidentiality and disclosure powers — the bill authorizes information-sharing between the Bank of Canada, the Minister of Finance, and unspecified "government authorities" (which the text says includes the RCMP, CSE, and CSIS) for national-security screening of accreditation applicants, with no statutory definition given for what constitutes a "national security" reason for refusal.