Mr. Speaker, Canadians deserve to be able to buy enough groceries and to have a full fridge and a full bank account. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case today. After 10 years of inflationary taxes and deficits, the cost of groceries has nearly doubled. The average family will have to spend $17,600 on food this year. That is a huge increase. Right now, 2.2 million Canadians are relying on food banks every month because they simply cannot afford to pay for food. This is becoming a crisis because too many people are unable to put food on the table.
A few years ago, the Liberals said they had a solution. The current Minister of Finance and National Revenue announced in 2023 that he would stabilize grocery prices by Thanksgiving that year. It is now February 2026, and Canada has the highest food inflation in the G7. That inflation rate has doubled since the Prime Minister came to power, and yet he promised affordable grocery prices. We have reached a point where Canadians can no longer pay their bills.
The solution proposed by the government is to reintroduce a GST credit that was originally put in place by Justin Trudeau a few years ago. The credit will give a minority of families about $10 per week, while most Canadians will get nothing. A small minority will receive a maximum amount of $10 per week to pay their $300 weekly grocery bill. If people are spending $300 at the grocery store and the government gives them a $10 voucher, of course they are going to accept it, but that is not going to pay the bills. That is not going to make much of a difference at all.
Worse still, piling another $12 billion in inflationary debt on Canadians is going to cause further inflation and drive up the price of everything. We know that some people are desperate and need this credit. That is why we are going to allow this measure to pass. However, no one should be saying that this is going to save the world. This is another illusion from this Prime Minister, who has made big promises and big announcements with no results. When he made this announcement, he had the price tags behind him at the grocery store where he held his press conference removed. He was so ashamed of the prices that he is forcing Canadians to pay that he chose to have them taken down. That is another illusion.
Canadians do not live in an illusion; they live in reality. An hour after the Prime Minister left the grocery store, the prices were put back up. He is not a magician who can make prices disappear. In fact, he is making them go up by imposing an industrial carbon tax that applies to the steel used in agricultural equipment, to fertilizers, to factories that process our food and to other things related to agri-food production.
There is also a new tax called the clean fuel regulations. It is not really a regulation; it is a tax that, according to Environment Canada, will increase the price of diesel and gasoline by 7¢ per litre this year and by 17¢ per litre over the next four years. This tax is even worse than the carbon tax that the Conservatives forced the government to abolish, because at least the government was offering a rebate for that and it did not apply to tractors and other farm equipment or to fishers' boats.
The new tax applies everywhere, including to fishing and farming operations. It is already significantly increasing the cost of food production because the farmers and truckers who bring us our food have to pay it. Lastly, the Prime Minister is forcing Canadians to pay a packaging tax, and the government wants to ban plastics. Phony environmentalists may think it is a good idea to ban plastic, but that will cause food to spoil much faster, and that cost will be passed on to consumers.
Let us not forget the inflationary deficits. Before entering politics, the Prime Minister admitted that deficits increase inflation. Now he is presenting us with the largest deficit in the history of Canada, except during the COVID‑19 pandemic. The deficit has doubled since Mr. Trudeau left office. This deficit is obviously causing widespread inflation across our economy. The cost of government is driving up the cost of living.
We are here to offer solutions. We are proposing that the government adopt our affordability plan and remove all carbon taxes to reduce the cost of gasoline and diesel by 7¢ a litre. Let us get rid of the taxes on steel, on farm equipment and on fertilizer. Let us get rid of the taxes on the production and transportation of our food and allow Canadians to use plastic to preserve their food longer.
We need to trim government fat. We need to put the government on a diet so that Canadians can afford to eat. It is just awful that Canadians have to cut back on what they eat in order to feed a government that is morbidly obese. We need to cut back on the bureaucracy, the consultants, cronyism, foreign aid and handouts to bogus refugees in order to reduce the size of the government and lower the cost of living for Canadians.
Our goal is to make Canada affordable. Considering all the land and natural resources we have, our country should be the most affordable in the world. That is our goal. We are prepared to work with the government and with anyone else to achieve that goal.
Let us work together to make life affordable.
After 10 years of the Liberal government, we now have the worst food inflation anywhere in the G7. Food prices are rising faster than in all of those other countries and twice as fast as when the Prime Minister took office.
The good news is that global factors cannot be to blame. It is not tariffs applied by the Americans, because those tariffs do not apply to Canadian-consumed food. Also, we would not have lower inflation in all the other G7 countries if it really was tariffs. It is a homemade inflation crisis caused by Liberal taxes, on fuel, on the metals that go into our farm equipment and on fertilizer, and the new regulations that prevent us from preserving our food with single-use plastics.
We propose to eliminate all of these taxes and costly red tape, to promote more competition in our grocery sector, because our mission is to work with all Canadians and with all parties to make this a country where one can have a full stomach, a full fridge and a full bank account all at once. One should be able to have a good meal for a good price in Canada. This should be the most affordable country in the world, because we have the most farmland on which to grow food, and we have among the greatest supplies of energy to help in food production.
Let us remove the one thing that is causing the price inflation, which is the costly Liberal government. We can remove those costs and unleash the production of affordable, nutritious, delicious food that will help our people be healthier and stronger but will also ensure that we are more autonomous and self-reliant. A nation that feeds its people is a nation that stands on its own feet and is truly sovereign.