Mr. Speaker, it is great to be in the House this time of the year talking about harvest, food security, food safety and the cost of living.
I come from Prince Albert. The riding of Prince Albert is an agriculture-producing region. It is a very viable part of the province of Saskatchewan, which produces a lot of the food we eat across Canada and around the world. What we are seeing happen right now in this economy and the bad policies of the government are really putting people in a bad situation. When we look at the cost of food right now, we are seeing food purchases and storage rising 3.5% year over year, versus 1.9% in the U.S. If we look at the costs in Canada, they are double the costs in the U.S. The prices have risen 48% faster in Canada. Food inflation has been 1.5%, which is double the 0.8% increase headlines in the CPI. Canadians are struggling.
I do not want to give the impression that because food prices are going up, farmers are making a pile of money or getting a fat wallet out of this. Nothing is further from the truth. If we look at what was facing farmers when they were making decisions last spring, at that time they had a carbon tax, a cost other producers around the world did not have. Now that the carbon tax is gone, inflation has gone down substantially. It is not because of good policy from the government; it is the government taking the Conservatives' policy and applying it that brought inflation down. Let us, the Conservative party, accept a thank you and take a bow for that, because that is something we, for the last 10 years, have been saying would happen, but the Liberals did not listen until the voters decided they were going to turf them unless they listened.
In Saskatchewan, we are a big canola-producing province. In fact, canola was developed in Saskatchewan, and it has grown in Alberta, Manitoba and parts of Ontario. Canola farmers are going through a really tough season this year. When we put tariffs on EVs roughly a year and a half ago, the 100% tariff, we and the canola and fisheries industries knew at that time that there were going to be consequences.
The government did not prepare for those consequences. It had six months before the tariffs started to hit the canola and seafood industries to proactively develop a game plan for how to mitigate the damage, to go to China and say, “We are going to work something out for our canola and seafood industries.” The Liberals did nothing. They could have put together a mitigation plan with the canola producers, crush plants and facilities and say, “Here is a game plan to help adapt to the new environment we are possibly going to be faced with,” but there was nothing. What they did offer were more loans and debt, but those do not solve the problem.
As producers look at a combine that is going up to $1.5 million and the machinery going over $1 million for an air drill, they are really starting to feel the pressures of the costs. When my dad first started farming, if he had a bad year, he could work in the winter time and catch up. Now, if these guys have a bad year, they are done. There is the amount of capital they have to put out in the spring and the lack of the ability to get that capital back in the fall if they have a bad crop, tariffs, bad market conditions or bad weather. There is so much going on that people who farm really have nerves of steel. There is no question about that.
At least the Premier of Saskatchewan was willing to go to China and talk about canola, and I will give credit to the parliamentary secretary for going with him, but I will say that, when we had these problems under the Harper government, it was not even a day and a half before Minister Ritz would be on a plane and in China to sort out the problem. There would have been a proactive game plan put together, sitting with canola producers and growers and talking to different associates, to figure out how to mitigate this and move things forward, “Can we get more crush? Can we do more? Can we step up to the U.A.E. or Dubai? What are the options to make sure we do not feel the harm Chinese tariffs will place?”
Nothing was done by the government. The cost to the Canadian economy is going to be substantial because of that, as will the hurt felt on the prairies and how that will domino back to Ontario and the rest of Canada.
I was talking to some of the prairie machinery manufacturers, and they are looking at things very closely, too. Their sales are down substantially because their costs are up. The industrial carbon tax on steel, for example, is something they have to pay that their competitors around the world do not. When they export into Kazakhstan, China and around the world, they are already at a disadvantage because of the costs they bear here in Canada because of the bad policies of the Liberal government.
That is the problem I see with the Liberal government. It brought in policies so quickly and blindly without listening to the industry, which has added costs to the system. It made the system so expensive that it has to subsidize people now just to stay alive.
Members have been talking about the food program for schools. I think the aim is $4.50 a plate. Nobody wants a kid to go hungry. The science is there. If children have full stomachs, they will learn better and grow, but I will remind the members opposite that kids only go to school five days a week. They are also not at school on holidays and during the summer break. If their parents cannot afford food when the kids are at school, what are they supposed to do when they are not at school?
Would it not be a better policy to look at things to bring costs down instead of bringing in a new program to help people out? Would that not be a better policy? Would it not be better to analyze what the real problems are and what is driving the cost of food up? The Conservatives put forward some solutions. Those are the things the government has to focus on, not looking at how to spend taxpayers' money to patch things up from A to B.
I will use the example of the plastics program. When that was proposed, those in the industry very quickly asked if we understand the consequences of this. They explained very clearly that a lot of the fruits and vegetables that come in plastic are shipped from around the world in that type of material. They made it very clear that they are not going to change the packaging in which they ship food to Canada to accommodate Canadians without somebody paying the cost for something different. They also said that the amount of food waste will increase substantially because of rotting and not having the proper packaging material and that there are no alternatives at this point in time, but there is research going on for alternatives.
What does the government want to do? It wants to barrel ahead with blinders on and bring in this kind of policy, a policy that is going to increase food waste, which increases cost. It is going to increase the cost of food because the packaging will have a higher cost. It is going to bring zero benefit to the environment.
I understand that we want to take care of the oceans and all that. I am all for it. I think we should be doing everything we can to do those types of things when it makes sense and when we have the science, technology and materials to do it. In the meantime, we can do things to mitigate the problem. There is a gentleman in Prince Albert who does plastic recycling. He has a home for it all. He is looking for ways to recycle.
I want to highlight for the Liberals that, when they bring in bad policy, there are costs. They say they are going to stick with the bad policy, but make it better by subsidizing, with a bit of a tax benefit, a food program, a dental program or something else. There was a time when Canadians did not need those types of programs. There was a time when I could go to the grocery store and fill up the cart, and it would only cost a hundred bucks. When I go to the grocery store now and put two items in the cart, it costs 250 bucks. It was 10 years ago that it was a hundred bucks. Today, it is substantially more.
I was joking with a guy in the grocery store. We were waiting in line, and he said that we do not need these big carts anymore because he cannot afford to fill it. He is right. Bacon has gone from $17 to $23. I used to buy hot dogs for $12 and they are now pushing $18. It used to be $18 for a pound of coffee and it is $32 now. These are the result of bad policy.
Farmers are not getting rich. This is not going into farmers' back pockets. If the farmers are not getting it, and I do not think the supply chain is getting it, who is getting it? It is the taxes being paid, directly and indirectly, to the federal government, which it is then paying back in some sort of subsidization program. It is absolutely stupid.
When the Prime Minister was elected, he made all kinds of promises. I will remind members of his promises, the things he said during the campaign. These are not made up. Conservatives are repeating word for word what he told Canadians. All I want is for him to keep his word.
The Prime Minister said he was going to reduce food costs, and he has not done that. He said he was going to make things better and be elbows up with the U.S. I am not sure if that was the right policy to begin with, to be honest, but he said it was the right policy and sold that to Canadians. Where is he today? He is scared to come into the House. We do not see him in question period or at any time during the day.
The reality is that costs have gone up. Bad policies have made costs go up, and the government is so blind and so much like a cult on the environment and in so many other areas that it refuses to make decisions that would make things—