Mr. Speaker, I thought that yesterday was Groundhog Day, but it seems to be happening again today. Everyone is probably familiar with the movie where the same day repeats itself over and over again. Once again, we have a Conservative Party motion that, unfortunately, exploits the hardship of Canadians who are struggling to put food on the table to serve the interests of the Conservatives' beloved petrochemical, oil and gas industry.
The Conservatives have spent almost all of their opposition days in the last two Parliaments saying that carbon pricing is to blame for the rising cost of living and the rising cost of food, and now here they are again today spreading false and inaccurate information. Their failure to address the real root causes of the increase in grocery costs demonstrates a blatant lack of diligence and compassion. Not only are the Conservatives once again blaming the government for the meagre measures it introduced to fight climate change, most of which have already been shelved, but they are also calling for even more backpedalling on the environment and the oil and gas issue.
Based on this line of reasoning, now that the Liberals have essentially co-opted the Conservative agenda, caved to oil and gas companies on pretty much everything they want and abolished consumer carbon pricing, we would expect food prices to go down, but that has not happened. Carbon pricing is gone, and it has not happened. It has not happened because carbon pricing did not drive up food prices and the cost of living. The Conservatives are back at it, and this time they want to repeal a crucial regulation on industrial carbon pricing. Regardless of what my Conservative colleagues are saying today, we know that particular carbon price has no impact on food prices. The impact is too small to be measurable, according to the Canadian Climate Institute. The impact is almost nil.
The motion is a manifestation of the populism we have come to expect from the Conservative Party over the past few years. The Conservatives are touching on a real issue that people are angry and worried about. We too are worried about the rising cost of living, but meaningless slogans will not make things better. Giving people real, concrete solutions will.
The Conservative leader does not seem to have learned anything over the past year. His strategy basically involves continuing to demonize public policy, especially climate and environmental policy, of course, rather than putting forward real proposals that could help people deal with today's serious cost of living crisis. I would even go so far as to say that it is completely out of touch to manipulate households' financial concerns to advance the oil and gas agenda and further line the pockets of shareholders of oil and gas companies in Canada, which are mostly foreign-owned. These profits, not to mention the subsidies, even increase grocery bills. It does not help to tell lies or half-truths to those who are suffering right now, those who cannot afford to put enough food on the table and who have to choose between paying for their housing and paying for groceries.
I think it is important that we review the facts. It has been scientifically proven that if we abandon the fight against climate change, as the Conservatives are proposing and as the Liberals may want to do, food prices will only continue to rise. If we abandon the fight against climate change, food prices will definitely continue to rise. Let us think about how food production, our farmers and our agricultural producers are affected by wildfires, floods and droughts, not to mention other unpredictable weather conditions that are getting stronger, more frequent and even more alarming in scale. This is for real. We also need to think about the pests and diseases that come with climate change and contribute to rising food prices.
Let us look at Canada's Food Price Report 2025, which my Conservative colleagues often mention. That report explains that, in 2024, cocoa prices increased because of high temperatures and extreme weather conditions in West Africa, while orange juice prices spiked because floods and droughts damaged harvests in Brazil. These are examples of international imports that have risen in price and had an impact on the household expenses of Canadians, of our constituents.
In place of these products, we could develop other solutions to achieve greater food sovereignty, increase resilience in agriculture and stimulate, for example, greenhouse cultivation, processing and freezing. These are all solutions that would contribute to food sovereignty and greater resilience.
One of the real reasons for rising food prices is climate change. That is undeniable when we look at the effects of climate change on production everywhere across Canada, even in my Conservative colleagues' ridings. We can read the following in a study on the cost of climate change conducted by the the Institut de recherche en économie contemporaine: “Droughts were an important factor in the recent dramatic increase in crop insurance payments in Canada, which surged from $890 million in 2018 to $4.887 billion in 2022.” That is nearly $5 billion in crop insurance. The value of these payments increased more than fivefold in five years. Obviously, that has an impact on the cost of food.
In Canada, in practical terms, we are talking about droughts that have affected crop yields. In Saskatchewan, yields actually declined by 47% in 2021. According to Statistics Canada, “While activity was up in most sectors of the economy, those gains were entirely negated by the worst drought in nearly two decades”. That was about Saskatchewan, but Quebec was not spared either. In the Abitibi region, for example, hay producers received a record $6.8 million in compensation for the 2023 drought. That is more than triple the annual average. They had to bring in hay from the west because they were having a hard time producing it in Quebec, partly because of the drought conditions.
The government needs to develop a climate change adaptation strategy to protect against these crop problems, among other things. Moreover, this strategy should also be concrete and sustainable. That is not currently the case with the federal government's national adaptation strategy, which is underfunded and has been criticized by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, among others.
Getting back to the Dalhousie University report, it states that wildfires in the west also affected transportation, such as rail lines, which has an impact on the cost of food.
If we refocus the debate, one real solution would be to make the industries, including the petrochemical, oil and gas industries, pay for their pollution, their impact on climate change and the extreme weather events they are causing. There are many other problems related to the oil and gas industry. An initial report by False Profits, conducted by economist Jim Stanford, showed that the spike in world oil prices in 2022 was the main factor behind the subsequent surge in inflation. The fact is that fossil fuels cause inflation and have a major impact on people's cost of living. Soaring oil prices caused by financial speculation are responsible for a significant portion of inflation and, according to this report, even cost Canadians nearly $200 billion between 2022 and 2025. That is $12,000 per household.
We in the Bloc Québécois believe that the rising cost of living in Canada, and also in Quebec, is a major problem that is causing people to suffer. We need to address this issue, but to do so, we need to tackle its root causes, and climate action is not currently on the agenda. This is a major problem. We are talking about inaction. The situation is serious, and doing less will only make the problem worse. Unfortunately, that is what my Conservative colleagues are proposing.
Obviously, we will be voting against the motion.