Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
As I was saying, this committee does deal with income security programs. We're responsible for issues of income security that include government policies that affect cost affordability for Canadians, including the affordability of food.
In fact, we will have bills coming to this committee dealing with food security and food costs. We know the results of increasing carbon taxes on farmers puts Canada's food security at risk and increases the food costs for all people in our communities. Removing the carbon tax from all farm fuels is important to help address this.
We know that food costs for Canadians continue to rise. In fact, some of the testimony we heard here today from not-for-profits was talking about the cost of inflation, the cost of food, the needs of not-for-profits and how volunteerism is so important to serve not-for-profits. It is directly within the mandate of this committee.
We know that the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports that farmers will pay just under a billion dollars in carbon taxes between now and 2030. We know that this is increasing the cost of food for Canadians. A lot has been reported around costs for farmers with how much they are paying in carbon taxes. For example, we have one farmer with a chicken broiler business who said that the cost of the carbon tax to their company was $120,000 in 2022. It will be $180,000 in 2023. Once the carbon tax reaches its full amount, it will be $480,000 to that individual business.
This legislation is really important to pass, so that we can start addressing the inflation and affordability crisis that Canadians are dealing with.
We know that other organizations have talked about how much they're paying in carbon taxes. A mushroom farm talked about paying $150,000 in carbon tax alone. As this increases to the 2030 level, that farm will be paying over $450,000 per year in carbon taxes.
This is affecting the price of food that Canadians are paying. As I mentioned, this does directly flow into a lot of the work of this committee, because we look at a lot of affordability issues directly affecting Canadians.
Another example I want to provide is a poultry farm in Alberta that had talked about the increases in its carbon taxes. We see this right across the country. I know that I've heard it from businesses in my community as well. At a saskatoon berry farm in Alberta, their energy bills went from $12,000 a month to almost $27,000 a month.
We know that we are an exporting nation for a lot of the products that we farm here. This is making us uncompetitive. We are exporting, the prices for our farmers are higher, the food costs are higher and this making us uncompetitive and less productive. Passing this legislation will help somewhat in putting our farmers on more of an equal ground than they are on right now.
We know that when we're looking at inflation, food inflation is actually considerably higher. The thing with food inflation is that it's by each specific category of food, so some types of food are up higher than others. We can look at turkey, for example, which is up 67%. Green salads are up 33%. This is higher than the inflation rates that we've seen over the last couple of years. Food inflation is consistently higher than the inflation rate. Beef, pasta and fruit are also up.
We have to remember that, with inflation, it's compounding, but the worst kind of compounding. With investments, you want your investments to compound positively. This actually compounds negatively. If we have inflation at roughly 3%—we know that food inflation is higher than that—that's on top of last year, where inflation might have been 8% to 10% during that month. It's not like it's going back down to a zero level. It's actually compounding every year.
For our farmers, who are having to pay this onerous carbon tax, it only will keep increasing the cost of food for Canadians.
We've heard the finance minister talking about not wanting to pour fuel on the inflationary fire. In fact, policies like increasing the carbon tax every year do that. This legislation that we're calling on the Senate to pass is one step in starting to counter that.
The largest contributor to year-over-year CPI increases includes food purchases. Grocery prices rose faster than overall inflation, as I've said. Overall consumer prices have risen by 11.4% over the last two years. According to StatsCan, Canadian food prices are growing at the fastest pace in 40 years. The carbon tax is part of that. The continual increasing of the carbon tax is increasing the cost.