Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, although I am not rising at this moment with any pleasure. We know that people across the country, and certainly people in my community, are struggling with the price of food right now. I spoke to a woman last week. She shared something that I know is not unique to her and that was not easy to hear, which is that she has to periodically skip meals.
She said this in a whisper, because her husband was nearby and she did not want him to know that she was making this sacrifice for their family, that this was the only way they could balance the many costs that their family was shouldering.
Inflation affects everything across the board, but there are few things as essential as food and few things where we can see so demonstrably the rise in costs. “Canada's Food Price Report” has been abundantly clear on this. We know that this year alone, in 2026, the average Canadian family will expect to spend $1,000 more on food than it did last year. The average family is not guaranteed a $1,000 increase in its income. The average family is also shouldering increases in other costs, such as interest rates on mortgages and credit card bills, which are increasingly necessary for people to even maintain necessities in their homes.
We are also seeing fuel costs go up. The fuel standard responsible for about 17¢ a litre is, again, a hidden tax on productivity and on a necessity, especially in a riding as rural as mine. All of these are, though, I think, subordinate to the real crisis people feel at the grocery store when they see the increases.
This is not a global problem. This is a uniquely Canadian problem in the sense that Canada has the highest food inflation of anywhere in the G7, outpacing other countries. We know that 30% of students in the country are skipping meals.
I will share that this is very much a local problem in my communities, which I have the great privilege and honour of representing. One thing I can share about the St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank, which just released its numbers for 2025, is that the St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank had to feed 26,278 mouths in 2025. That is triple the number that it had to feed six years ago. The St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank had to feed three times as many people as it did just six short years ago.
I have some data today from the Corner Cupboard Food Bank in Aylmer. They have also seen record increases. Aylmer is a small community. In 2025, the Corner Cupboard had 1,919 household visits. That was an 8% increase over the prior year. More importantly, 40% of their clients were under the age of 18. There were 110 new families, people who have never before had to rely on a food bank and who, in 2025, could not take it anymore and needed that extra help.
We have seen a massive problem. A quarter of Canadian households are considered food insecure, and the government has not used every lever it has available to it. That is my question today. This is a complex problem. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are levers the government can deploy.
Why is the government not eliminating the hidden carbon taxes and taxes on food, the industrial carbon tax and the food and plastic packaging taxes, and reining in its reckless inflation to stop further increases?