Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today to speak to this opposition motion, but I cannot help but think it is just the same old Conservatives we have been seeing for years in this place. I am actually quite surprised they have not caught on to the fact that the tricks and misinformation they had been laying before Canadians for the last four years, in an effort to somehow try to clench power, has been unsuccessful for them. It did not work, yet here they are using the exact same tactics and thinking that Canadians are going to buy into their extremely disingenuous information.
Every Conservative wants to somehow blame the cost of rising food prices on the government and the actions of the government, but most Canadians realize that, when we trade in a global environment, prices are affected by global situations and global events. I will give a perfect example. In 2021, Ukraine was exporting roughly 87 million metric tons of wheat. Now it is exporting about 21 million tons, which is about a quarter of what it used to export.
When we consider that Ukraine was looked at as the breadbasket of the world and a major supplier of wheat, what did members think that would do to the price of wheat throughout the world when Ukraine had been distributing wheat throughout the world? Did they not think it would impact inflation? Conservatives want us to believe that it has nothing to do with it, that it is somehow only because of choices made by the government.
What flabbergasts me even more is the fact that I witnessed this for years before the last election. The Conservatives did the same thing. They deployed the same tactics and used the same false arguments, and then they lost an election on it. They promised that, if we eliminated the carbon tax, inflation would go down. I also heard a member say earlier today that inflation did go down when the carbon tax was eliminated in April. This is not true.
If we look over the last year and a half, inflation had been at, below or around the Bank of Canada benchmark for a solid eight to 10 months prior to the carbon tax being eliminated. Even the false logic the Conservatives are trying to use today in the House is extremely misleading and untrue, yet they continue to do it.
I am really concerned about some of the things I heard in the House today. I heard Conservatives asking questions, and then heckling during responses, about the national school food program. I heard someone heckle that it was a band-aid solution.