Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to this concurrence debate on a Conservative supplementary report on the variance in food prices.
It is interesting to hear my Liberal, NDP and Bloc colleagues not really talking about the impact that the carbon tax and other Liberal-NDP policies are having on Canadian farm families and our supply chain, which in turn, are driving up prices for Canadians and consumers, who are witnessing this first-hand at the grocery store shelves. We have talked a lot over the last week, our first week back in the House of Commons, about the impact we are seeing on food security in Canada. These numbers are truly startling, when we are seeing the number of Canadians who are now experiencing food insecurity in our country, a G7 country, up 111%. That is almost nine million Canadians struggling to find their next meal, millions of Canadian parents unable to feed their kids and 25% of our population struggling to put food on the table. These are numbers that I certainly never thought I would see in my lifetime.
The Liberals have been saying all afternoon that Canadians have just never had it so good, and I do not know what they are talking about. The stats are startling, and they are not only the stats on Canadians experiencing food insecurity but also the government's own data on on-farm income shows that it decreased 3% in 2022.
On-farm income is down $9.1 billion, from $13 billion in 2022, which is a drop of 41.7% from 2022 to 2023. Let us put this into some more specific numbers. In British Columbia, net farm income is down 36%; in Alberta, it is down 55%; in Saskatchewan, it is down 42%; in Quebec, it is down 43%; and in New Brunswick, it is down 55%. The member for Winnipeg North is saying that Manitoba farmers have never had it so good, but in that member's own province, that income has decreased 38%.
Why is this happening? It is because the carbon tax is costing Canadian farmers almost a billion dollars a year. It is continuing to go up year after year, but that is only what we are seeing in direct costs. They are also seeing higher costs on fertilizer, fuel, feed and every other input they are putting into their farm operations. Machinery and employment, all of these things, are seeing their prices go up.
On trucking, we have just heard that the Canadian Trucking Alliance has said that the impact that the carbon tax is having on their industry alone will be $4 billion by 2030. Bison Transport is not a huge trucking company, but it is a fairly substantial trucking company in western Canada. One of its owners is a constituent. Bison Transport paid $7.8 million in carbon taxes last year. That is one trucking company. It is halfway through this year, and it has already paid $4.5 million in carbon taxes. When its year-end is done, it will have paid close to $10 million in carbon taxes. That is just one trucking company, and they are passing those costs on to the consumer.
It is very difficult to square the circle of the Liberals saying that the carbon tax has no impact on food prices. Give me a break. Of course it does. That does not even talk about rail. CPKC and CN also charge producers and their vendors a carbon tax on everything they haul. Saskatchewan farmers paid $17 million in carbon taxes to the railways last year. That is $17 million, and we are wondering why farm incomes are so low and why we are seeing such a stark reduction in farm income.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture has talked to all of its members about its operating expenses and their farms. Operating expenses on Canadian farms are up 19%, the largest increase since 1979. What is the coincidence between 1979 and 2024? I will let members think about that for a second. They are the Liberal governments led by the current Prime Minister and his father, and they dump those costs onto Canadian farmers without any thought as to the consequences that will happen to Canadian consumers.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, the pre-eminent expert on food prices and the food supply chain in Canada and a professor at Dalhousie University, commonly known as the “food professor”, said that the Liberal-NDP carbon tax increases wholesale food costs by 34% in every single category.
The Liberals like to talk about the experts, the 200 economists who say the carbon tax is not increasing the cost of living. I would like to know who those experts are because the pre-eminent expert on food costs and the supply chain in Canada has clearly stated that the Liberal-NDP carbon tax increases food costs in all categories by 34%. Why is this number so different from what the Liberal government professes? Dr. Charlebois said that the CRA and Finance Canada are not properly quantifying the costs of the carbon tax for food supply or food production. I am very surprised that the Liberals would be selective on which numbers they use.
The Liberal member across the way has talked all day about using facts and figures. The Manitoba pork industry has never been stronger. I just told members about how Manitoba's agriculture farm income is down 38%. That is a fact. That is his own government's data. By this data, in Canada's pork industry, the number of hogs in Canada is down 265,000 head. I wonder why his numbers are so different from his government's numbers. That number is actually expected to go down another 2% in 2024. It is horrible when Liberals have to listen to the facts and the data that their own government has compiled.
As the opposition, we brought forward four recommendations that would address the volatile price of food and food for Canadians.
The first is to axe the tax. Eliminate the carbon tax, which is driving up the cost of everything consumers buy, including food.
The second is to do an in-depth study of the impact of both carbon taxes. I have to admit, whether it meant to or not, the government has now done that work. Carbon tax 1 punches a $25 billion hole in Canada's economy. We now know, as a result of an Order Paper question by my office, that carbon tax 2, the so-called clean fuel standard, adds another $9-billion sledgehammer hit to our economy. Therefore, both carbon taxes make up a $35 billion hit to Canadians. That is money coming out of their pocket. It is damaging their paycheques and certainly hurting Canada's economy.
The third recommendation is to eliminate the front-of-pack labelling policy path that the Liberal government is going down. It is a completely activist, ideological policy; certainly, no one has asked for it. It will cost the industry $8 billion. Does the government think the industry is going to just absorb those costs? That is like our NDP colleague saying that it is going to be a tax on profit. I am sure Galen Weston is going to happily take that tax out of his pocket and his profits and just not worry about it. Of course, those costs are going to—