Madam Speaker, it is nice to be here in adjournment debate. I would like to thank my friend and colleague from the Conservative Party, with whom I have co-hosted events here on the Hill. I would like to thank her for her work for parents, and I enjoy the opportunity to talk about poverty elimination measures because it is a policy topic I am interested in personally.
I am going to focus my responses through two poverty elimination experts, economists from my colleague's province of Saskatchewan. The first is Brett Dolter, who is an assistant professor in the department of economics at the University of Regina. He said, in a recent article:
Even if you overlook the modelling omissions in the PBO report, their results still actually show that the 20 per cent of households with the lowest incomes get an average of $720 extra back...and the next 20 per cent of households still get $412 extra back....
What he is trying to indicate is that rebates are higher than the carbon tax for all poor folks in Saskatchewan. People on a lower income receive a lot more back through the Canada carbon rebate than they pay, and that is well documented in Saskatchewan by people who are working with folks who visit food banks. Another well-known Saskatchewan-based economics professor said that the misleading information has led to the belief that most Saskatchewan residents pay more, which is false.
In addition to the article I mentioned, I read an anecdote from Alan Holman, a man from Saskatoon who is on disability assistance. He says that without the Canada carbon rebate, he would have to scale back on spending for his everyday needs. He says that the Canada carbon rebate that he receives four times a year from the federal government is crucial for his household budget.
Also from Regina is Peter Gilmer, who is an advocate with the Anti-Poverty Ministry in Regina. He says that people on low income rely on the rebates to pay for the essentials. He also says, “For the vast majority of low-income people, whether they’re on income security programs or earn low wages, they’re actually better off in terms of the bottom line when receiving the rebate and paying [the carbon levy].”
Time and time again, members from the Conservative Party stand up in the House and talk about the hunger report from Food Banks Canada. The aforementioned event that my colleague and I have co-hosted here on the Hill was with Food Banks Canada. She will recall that every year, when representatives of Food Banks Canada come, they make four recommendations.
In its 108-page report this year, Food Banks Canada did not mention carbon pricing, because it knows there is no tax on groceries. Conservative members continually stand in the House to mislead Canadians to suggest that carbon pricing applies to food, but it simply does not. The Food Banks Canada hunger report would have indicated that.
If it were simply a case of removing the carbon price from food, that would be a simple fix, but there is not a carbon price on food, and actually the leading driver of higher food costs in Canada is climate change itself. If we bury our heads in the sand and pretend that climate change does not exist and is not impacting our daily lives, and if we just say it is somebody else's problem because we are a smaller country by population so other people ought to fix it first, well, I will say that in Canada I know that we all believe we are leaders.
I will finish by stating the four recommendations that Food Banks Canada has made to the federal government and to all governments across Canada: first, rebuilding Canada's social safety net; second, solving the affordability crisis; third, helping workers with low incomes make ends meet; and fourth, addressing northern and remote food insecurity and poverty.
There are policy recommendations on all four, addressing the key issues. We have been rebuilding Canada's social safety net. One of the ways is through dental care. I just ask the member opposite, if she is going to quote Food Banks Canada, to please rely on the insight and the perspective it has shared, not on the Conservatives' own political rhetoric.