Mr. Speaker, I want to begin with something that happened in my riding, because sometimes the most honest way to understand an economic problem is simply to listen to the people living with it.
A woman named Amy from Cloverdale wrote to me recently. She works hard, pays her bills and tries to live responsibly, but she told me that grocery shopping has become something that she now dreads, not because she is buying luxuries, but because basic food is becoming harder to put in the cart. Meat, once a normal part of meal, has become something she buys only occasionally. When she heard that prices are expected to rise again this year, she wondered whether Canadians will eventually be on their hands and knees, begging the government for relief.
I heard a similar concern when I visited seniors in my riding this week. These are men and women who spent decades working, paying taxes, raising families and contributing to this country, yet many told me that they are now studying grocery flyers and cutting back on foods they never imagined giving up at this stage in their lives. The question they asked is the same as Amy's, and it is very simple: How did it become this hard to buy food in Canada?
The Prime Minister once told Canadians to judge him by the price of groceries, and Canadians are doing exactly that. The numbers are troubling. Canada now has the highest food inflation in the G7, with grocery prices rising more than 7% over the past year, which is far faster than overall inflation. Coffee and beef are up dramatically. Everyday staples are rising faster than the rest of the economy.
Roughly 70% of the food Canadians eat is produced right here in Canada. When Canadians see food prices rising faster here than anywhere else in the G7, they begin asking whether the explanation lies closer to home than the government would like to admit.
There is a very simple rule in economics: When governments make something more expensive to produce, the price of that thing eventually rises. When we look at the policies affecting food production in Canada today, we see farmers facing higher costs from the industrial carbon tax on fuel, fertilizer and farm equipment; truckers facing the fuel standard tax, which raises the cost of transporting food across this country; and food producers and processors facing a packaging tax projected to cost Canadians more than $1 billion.
None of these policies appear on a grocery receipt, but their costs travel through the system, from the farm to the processor to the truck, and finally to the grocery shelf and when they arrive at the checkout counter, which is where Canadians experience them.
When I think about where those rising costs eventually lead, I cannot help but think of my own family. I have 22 grandchildren, and like every grandparent, I want them to grow up in a Canada where hard work still allows a family to afford the basics of life.
The seniors I spoke to were not only worried about prices but asking something deeper, about fairness. These are Canadians who spent decades paying taxes into this country, yet they now find themselves watching every dollar they spend on groceries while government spending seems to grow in every direction. Some of them asked how it is possible that people who paid into this country their entire lives are struggling to keep up with the basics, while individuals whose refugee claims have already been rejected can still remain in Canada for years and continue receiving benefits, including coverage for dental care, prescriptions and other health services that many seniors still have to pay for themselves.
Canadians are patient people, but they expect one thing from their government, which is not to make the essentials of life harder to afford. Canadians like Amy and the seniors I spoke with this week are asking a very simple question: When will the government stop the policies that are driving up the cost of food, so that Canadians can afford to feed themselves again?