Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington to this chamber.
On food and food security, governments around the world have the desire and, indeed, the responsibility to ensure that their citizens can afford food. What has an impact on the price of food? There are obviously many things: weather, the cost of inputs, trade wars, government policy and many other things. I am a Conservative, so I believe that the market mechanism is the most efficient way to transfer the value of goods and services between buyers and sellers, between parties, and to account for all the impactful factors that I previously mentioned. This applies to all sectors in our economy and, indeed, to agriculture and the agri-food industry.
However, markets only work sustainably when there is a balance of power between buyers and sellers. Over time, structures and regulations, if we want to call them that, have developed to bring about that balance of power. The less the better, obviously, but over time, four things, in my mind, particularly apply to agriculture and, to a varying extent, to different food products.
The first factor is the perishability of food. I will illustrate. If we were to negotiate the price of a glass of milk, a tomato or a bushel of wheat, but we do not agree today and want to come back two weeks later to pick up the discussion, the value of those three different items will have certainly depreciated differently. Therefore, there are different mechanisms that bring about a timely response to perishability and determining price.
The second factor is the ratio of buyers and sellers. We know about oligopolies and monopolies. We have discussed in this chamber and at the agriculture committee the food retail sector and the development of a grocery code of conduct to address concerns about how values transfer between our food processors and manufacturers to the retail sector. This obviously also applies to the areas of telecom, airlines and banking.
The third factor is the complexity of the biology, or the size of the investment. It is a little different when one builds a dairy herd, a vineyard or an orchard. There is an expression that one plants pears for one's heirs. It takes seven years to bring pears into a full harvest, versus the annual crops I am used to, which I have another shot at next year.
The last and most important factor is the international trading arena. At times, especially in today's environment, everything, from border measures to tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers, etc., has an impact on how food is marketed.
Why do I say this? What is my point? Government policies can have a positive impact on the cost of food for citizens by creating the climate that balances the power between buyers and sellers, through healthy competition, which drives innovation and drives lower costs to the final consumer. Every functioning government around the world is involved in agriculture and agriculture markets to different degrees to bring about food security.
I should quickly mention one other area, and that is the whole area of production insurance or crop insurance. No private sector insurance company takes on the massive risks that our farmers do without some form of government intervention to aid with those costs. The private sector simply will not do it on its own. Farmers need to survive to another season in the face of disastrous losses.
Government policies also have a negative impact on the cost of food, and that is why we are here today. The Prime Minister said at the swearing-in of his cabinet on May 13, “Canadians will hold account by their experience at the grocery store.” The grade is in. Food Banks Canada gave Canada a D on poverty and food insecurity, which rose almost 40% over the past two years. The poverty rate in Canada has risen for three straight years in a row, and one of the main factors in food insecurity and poverty being up 40% is the fact that food prices are up 40% since the Liberals took power.
We have heard the numbers today. In August alone, food inflation came in at 3.4%, well above the Bank of Canada's targets. According to the Food Banks Canada report, 25.5% of households are struggling to afford food; this is up from 18.4% in 2023. The Daily Bread Food Bank expects four million visits to its food banks in 2025, double the visits from two years ago. Food bank use is up 142% since 2015.
From the field to the fork, costs and, hence, prices are rising. It is often said that farmers are the first link in the food chain, which is actually not quite accurate. Farmers have many input suppliers, but whether it is from skyrocketing input costs, higher interest rates or burdensome regulations, Canadian farmers are being squeezed harder every year. Another expression is that farmers buy retail, sell wholesale and pay the freight both ways. I will come back to that in a moment.
That is why Conservatives call on the Prime Minister to stop taxing food by eliminating the following four things.
First is the industrial carbon tax on fertilizer and farm equipment. Statistics Canada has reported that realized net farm income fell 26% in 2024, the largest single decline in a decade. Meanwhile, rising costs for fuel, fertilizer and feed continue to make farming less economically viable. While the consumer-facing carbon tax has been removed, the buried industrial carbon tax remains, and its costs are embedded in several inputs in food production, including farm equipment and the production of fertilizers. Canada also remains the only G7 country to maintain tariffs on Russian fertilizers, effectively raising the cost of fertilizers sourced from anywhere in Canada. The U.S. never applied the tariffs, and this past year its imports of Russian fertilizers have rebounded higher than they were the last two years.
Second is the inflation tax, the money-printing deficits. The previous Liberal government increased the money supply by 40% to address massive deficits while the GDP grew only 4%. The result, obviously, could be expected: inflation. Revenues now from the GST flow almost exclusively to cover the interest on the debt, and that is before we have this upcoming budget. With the budget delayed until, what is it now, October 35, we will only know about the budget two-thirds of the way into this fiscal year. Again, the PBO report this morning anticipates what those deficits will be. Canadians deserve a government that will cut wasteful spending so Canadians can afford to put food on their tables. There are human consequences to these policies: more empty stomachs. The Prime Minister promised affordable food, but now Toronto's food banks are expecting those previously mentioned four million visits. Also, 86,000 jobs were lost after he promised more jobs.
The third thing to be cut would be the clean fuel standard, better known as “carbon tax two”, again adding up to 16¢ or 17¢ per litre of diesel. Fuel is not an option for farmers. It drives the tractors. The consumer-facing carbon tax is gone; this cost is not, and it is buried. It is not transparent, and it gets passed on down to consumers. I mentioned before that farmers pay the costs of freight both ways. Transportation is involved in almost every step of the food value chain process, not only on the farms. That fuel cost is buried in every step of the way.
Lastly is the food packaging tax, the plastics tax. Alternatives to plastic come with their own environmental costs. According to the government's own analysis, banning single-use plastics would actually increase waste generation rather than reduce it. The ban would also dramatically increase food waste costs that are embedded back into the system. The answer here is not banning single-use plastics but increasing recycling.
We are the loyal opposition. We will oppose bad policy, but we will also propose solutions. Moving forward with positive actionables, here is what Canada must do. We must build a national agri-food brand and make Canada synonymous with safe, premium, innovative foods. We must treat food security as a national priority. We must modernize the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. Approvals must take months, not years. We need to back entrepreneurs, cut costs in our transportation sector and other areas, and invest in processing.
We will oppose, and we will propose, but we will also expose. We call on the government to appoint Jason Jacques, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, for a full seven-year term; to be honest with Canadians about “how money-printing deficits will again cause rampant inflation of food, housing and other prices...when Canadians are [so] broke”; and to explain to Canadians “how big a financial mess [the Prime Minister has] made, with what is expected to be a 100 per cent increase in the deficit under [his] watch”.
Just from the PBO's report this morning, in the absence of final financial results for the past year, we expect there would be a budget deficit of $51.7 billion in 2024-25, $68.5 billion this coming year and rising from there.
To conclude, government policy can affect, positively or negatively, the price of food. The record over this past decade is self-evident. The new Prime Minister said he should be judged by the prices at the grocery store. Well?