Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the motion put forward by the Leader of the Opposition, a motion that speaks not just to economic theory but to daily life, on farms, in rural communities and at the kitchen tables of Canadian families. I speak today not as a member of the House, but as someone directly involved in agriculture. I am a farmer. I deal with input costs, fuel bills, freight invoices and the realities of producing food in this country. When we talk about food prices, I am not speaking in abstractions. I am speaking from the field, from the farmyard.
In October 2023, the finance minister promised that food prices would stabilize soon. In May 2025, the Prime Minister said he would be judged by the prices at the grocery store. If that is the measure, Canadians have already rendered their judgment. Food inflation remains among the highest in the G7, twice as high as when the Prime Minister took office, and roughly double the rate of the United States. Every month, there are nearly 2.2 million visits to the local food banks, and the usage has more than doubled since the government came to power.
As a farmer, I see both sides: families struggling to afford groceries and farmers struggling under the rising costs to produce food. I want to share an example from my riding. Not long ago, I met a young farm family who run a mixed operation. They work long hours, help their neighbours and quietly support their community, sponsoring the local rink, donating to fundraisers and stepping up when others are in need. They are proud, stoic people who do not look for handouts, yet their input costs, such as diesel, fertilizer, machinery repairs and freight, have risen far faster than the prices they receive for their grain and livestock. Their margins are being squeezed.
Today, that same farm family now relies on the local food bank to help feed their own children. It is deeply uncomfortable for them to admit that. They are being pushed to food banks not because they are unwilling to work, but because public policy has driven up the cost of production while their income has not kept pace. That is not a failure of farming; that is a failure of public policy.
It is not just about grocery pricing. This is about increasing the cost of production. These policies squeeze farmers from planting to harvest to transportation and erode their bottom lines. When input costs rise faster than revenues, farmers cut back, delay investment and are pushed to the brink. When the government layers on the industrial carbon tax, higher fuel costs under the clean fuel regulations and new taxes on food packaging, it is not just raising grocery prices. It is directly hurting the viability of family farms. Food does not magically appear on store shelves. It is grown, harvested, processed, transported, packaged and distributed. Every step along that journey costs money.
When government policy raises the costs, consumers pay more. The industrial carbon tax applies to farm fuel, fertilizer production, grain drying and food processing. On my farm, that means higher costs to run tractors, to dry grain and to buy fertilizer. The clean fuel regulations have already added about 7¢ per litre to diesel, and that is going to rise to 17¢. In Saskatchewan, where distances are long, that directly increases the cost of producing and delivering food. The proposed food packaging tax will add $1.3 billion in costs that will ultimately show up on grocery shelves.
Members opposite say that these taxes are imaginary. Trust me that they are not. They show up on my fuel invoices, my fertilizer bills, my freight costs, my machinery parts and ultimately in food prices. In fact, in Saskatchewan, there is a line item on our natural gas bill that says “carbon tax”. We have already seen what happens when these taxes are removed. When the consumer carbon tax was lifted from home heating oil, prices responded immediately and families felt relief. This proves that these taxes are real and embedded in the cost of living, and removing them has an immediate effect.
If removing one portion of the carbon tax helps families, then removing the industrial carbon tax and clean fuel regulations from food production and transportation would meaningfully help bring down the cost of grocery prices. Farmers are not asking for special treatment, just common sense: Stop taxing the production and movement of food.
In fact, this morning at the agriculture committee, I asked some witnesses directly if there was an effect. Did they see a direct effect from the industrial carbon tax, from the food packaging tax and from the clean fuel standard? My goodness, they had a lot to say. It is a direct cost and it is crushing their operations. The over-regulation and the tax burden they are feeling are putting them at real risk of losing their businesses. We cannot make food more affordable by making it more expensive to produce.
The second part of the motion, boosting competition in our grocery sector, is also critical. More competition would benefit both farmers and families. This motion is pro-common sense. It recognizes that federal policy sets the framework within which food is grown, moved and sold. Right now, that framework is making food more expensive. Canadians need practical policies that balance environmental goals with affordability, competitiveness and food security. We cannot decarbonize and deindustrialize agriculture. We cannot lower food prices by taxing the tools that farmers use to feed this country.
This motion has a clear path forward: Remove the hidden taxes that drive up food costs and increase competition in the grocery sector. If the Prime Minister wants to be judged by the grocery prices, he should support this motion and act on it.
There are so many ways that we can help reduce grocery costs in Canada. These taxes are killing farmers. We have no choice. We have to buy diesel. We have to use fertilizer.
I will give an example as an agriculture producer. When the Liberals came out with the plan to reduce fertilizer use by 30%, I want them to know that there is not a direct correlation. If we reduce fertilizer use in Canada by 30%, we are not going to have only a 30% reduction in production. It does not work like that. There is a certain amount of fertilizer we need. Plants need a certain amount of nitrogen. They need a certain amount of phosphorus. If we reduce that, we are not going to have a 30% reduction. It is going to be a lot less. There is a lot of science behind this.
Trust me: Farmers do not want to spend a cent more than they have to when it comes to fertilizer and when it comes to herbicide. We have tried to limit our inputs as much as we can. Margins are already very tight in Canada. It is not like we are going out and trying to use more product than we need to. The Liberal government is penalizing us every step of the way when we are trying to reduce its use.
If members want to talk about the environment, as the last speaker said, I can go on for days about it. I had the pleasure of teaching sustainable grazing and carbon sequestration all over the world for 20 years in many countries. I can say that Canada leads the way on this front. There are many studies in Canada where we have producers who have changed their grazing methods, done nothing more than change the way they utilize their land, and we are now sequestering up to 12.5 tonnes of carbon per hectare. Canada is leading the way when it comes to regenerative and sustainable agriculture. Do we get any credit from the federal government for this? No, we do not.
When it comes to zero till, much of that has been pioneered by a very good friend of mine, Pat Beaujot, who created a company called Seed Hawk. The company uses zero-till methods and makes minimal disturbances in the soil, keeping carbon in the soil where it needs to be instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. This is a Canadian invention, yet when it comes to the Liberals, they say we have to use the baseline of 2005, which is just after when this technology was introduced into Saskatchewan. There is so much hypocrisy on that side, where the Liberals claim they are champions for the environment, yet when it comes down to it, their only solution is taxes. That is the only thing they want to do.
If not, Canadians, including farmers, families and food bank users, will draw our own conclusions. I will be proudly voting in favour of this motion, and I encourage all members to do the same.