Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from OGGO, the member for Windsor West.
Canadians are once again finding themselves in a Liberal-caused food inflation crisis. We have the highest food inflation rate in the G7. The government repeatedly promised and continues to promise that it will have the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Unfortunately, what it has delivered to Canadians is the fastest-growing food inflation rate in the G7.
The Liberals spend so much time in the House gaslighting Canadians and trying to convince them that it is a new government, not the same government whose policies for 10 years have led to the highest food costs in the G7. They work tirelessly to have Canadians forget that, almost as much as they work to have Canadians forget that the Prime Minister actually stood in the House and said that he should be judged by the price of food in the grocery stores. Well, Canadians have judged him, and the verdict is in: He has failed on that point.
There are 2.2 million Canadians lining up at food banks every month. Twenty per cent of them are reportedly fully employed. Imagine that: fully employed and still having to go to a food bank to feed one's family. Thirty per cent of the people served by food banks are children.
In Edmonton we have the Veterans Association Food Bank, which serves veterans and former frontline RCMP and Coast Guard members, etc. Let us think about that: A country this wealthy, under the Liberals, requires veterans to seek help at a food bank.
Canada is a country so wealthy that the Liberals have enough money to spread around to give money to Vietnam for gender rights, for the government to pay for sex shows in Germany, and for the government to do a report, paid for by DND, on how space exploration is racist and exploitative. The government spent millions of dollars to study intersectional democratic spaces in Nepal, and it actually gave tens of millions of dollars in corporate welfare to a large international company that funds ISIS terrorists in Syria.
The government has all that money, yet 2.2 million Canadians are lining up at food banks. The number has doubled in the last 10 years. In Edmonton, food bank usage is at its highest point in history, doubling in the last five years. It is higher than in the early 1990s, when there was about 10% unemployment in Edmonton. It is higher than in the early 1980s, when there were 18% to 19% interest rates.
In response to the Liberal-created food inflation crisis, the Liberals reached into their grab bag and pulled out and recycled a Trudeau era policy of bumping up the GST credit. More money in Canadians' pockets is fantastic. I would prefer it to come through tax breaks, but I would support anything that puts more money into Canadians' pockets. However, I wish the government had spent a bit more time and made the benefit more targeted. Just like with the COVID payments, the government threw out the money, vote-buying in some cases, without any oversight or any plan to target the people most in need.
In this program put forward by the Liberals, if someone is married with two kids, with mom and dad both working full-time at about minimum wage in Ontario, they would earn too much to get the added top-up to help out with food inflation. If they have three kids, and with mom and dad both working and earning around $17 an hour, they would not qualify. With four kids, and with mom and dad working and each making $17.80 an hour, they would not qualify under the program.
The people who would benefit are single and have incomes below the threshold. About one-third of the 12 million people the Liberals say they would be helping are under the age of 30 and are single. Therefore, if the kids are living at home and going to university, they would qualify, but if someone is living in a cramped apartment with three kids, with mom and dad making $17.80 an hour, they would not qualify.
We are not arguing about whether the help is needed, but the government should have made it more targeted toward the people needing help. About 10% of Canadians do not do their taxes, most of whom are low-income earners. If someone does not do their taxes, they would not get the help. If someone has low income and has not done their 2024 taxes, they would not get the help. If someone was employed in 2024 and doing very well but got laid off and had no income in 2025 up until now, they would get nothing. The issue is not so much about the help needed for people; the government should have been smart about it and made it more targeted to help Canadians.
Furthermore, again, it is all borrowed money. It is about an extra $12 billion that would be added to our deficit. In the five years the program would run, it would cost $1.4 billion in added interest payments. This comes from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That $1.4 billion was not budgeted, so where would the government find the money? It would either cut other services or tax Canadians more in the future.
The program the government has introduced would run for five years. That is basically an admission of failure from the Liberal government that, for five more years, Canadians are going to be in a food inflation crisis.
Instead of five more years of Liberal high costs on food, there are things we can do to help Canadians right now, and that is what we are proposing. We could eliminate the industrial carbon tax, which affects the cost of fertilizer and the cost of food processing. We could get rid of the fuel standard tax. Currently it is 7¢ a litre, and it is going to go up to 17¢ a litre. That 17¢ a litre would come into effect at the same time as the proposed program would sunset. We are going to have higher fuel costs at the same time as the rebate would end.
The government needs to end its insane ideological war on plastics. The plastic ban is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars; it was actually published in the Gazette. The government's own numbers say $1.3 billion. The Canadian Produce Marketing Association says that the Liberals' zero-plastics crusade will cost consumers $3.4 billion and lead to about an extra half-million tonnes of spoiled food, despite the fact that 99% of plastics safely end up in landfills. Instead of an ideological attack on plastics, the government should just end the hidden tax altogether.
It is the same with the industrial carbon tax. The government members will sit here and say it does not exist, that it does not add to food costs. The government would have people believe that input costs somehow never make it through the supply chain and cost farmers more, cost truckers more, cost grocery stores more and cost Canadians more.
I often refer to a study from the Royal Bank of Scotland that I read years ago. It is a report on the flow-through of energy taxes, much like the industrial carbon tax or the previous carbon tax, saying that 100% of energy taxes flow through to the consumer. Why I was reading something from the Royal Bank of Scotland is a different story, but the fact is that every added cost to farmers, to truckers and to grocery stores ends up in the price to consumers.
Every single time we change packaging rules, it adds costs, like the billions of dollars mentioned, which end up coming out of the pockets of Canadians in the form of higher food costs. Every time we add costs for transportation or for energy, it ends up coming out of the pockets of Canadians. We are in a food inflation crisis caused by the policies of the government. The government needs to take practical steps to end its ideological attack on Canadians and to focus on immediate, pragmatic steps to end the food inflation crisis now, next year and five years from now.