Agriculture committee  That is a very good question. I have already stated my opinion on that subject. Personally, I don't think it is a good initiative to take. I understand the geopolitical reasoning for the decision, but penalizing producers this way may compromise our food security, not just in Ca

Agriculture committee  I don't think the tariff is influencing inflation. I think the tariff's influence is primarily on the viability of our farms. We can assume that we might lose farms because of it.

Agriculture committee  I think it boils down to authority and access to information and data, and how it collects data and how it manages it. Right now we're flying in the dark, and there's a lot of unfinished business, which is impacting the reputation of the industry. I actually agree with you. I t

Agriculture committee  I submitted our “Greedflation” reports. I have submitted three of them published in the last few months. They have already been submitted to the committee.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair and committee members, today I aim to address three key issues before the committee: carbon pricing, sales taxes on food and the prospect of implementing a Canadian SNAP program. Let's talk about the carbon tax first. The question of whether the carbon tax serves as a

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. What we've noticed over the last few months is that a lot of attention is given to the CPI. I think it's really the wrong focus. We need to focus on the IPPI, the industrial product price index. If you look at pricing over the last, say, three or fou

Finance committee  Absolutely. I did contact the Bank of Canada to ask for the arithmetic behind the 0.15%. As I mentioned earlier, it looks at only three components of the CPI. It doesn't evaluate the compounding effect of the carbon tax across the supply chain. That needs to be measured.

Finance committee  We can't say how the carbon tax is impacting people, because, again, we can't correlate the carbon tax with food prices, but we can certainly look at food inflation and demographics. Clearly, single-parent households and seniors with fixed incomes are largely hit. Right now, beca

Finance committee  Just this year, we believe that over 20 products have been shrinkflated and are now taxed because of the size of the container. That's why we recommend that the zero-rated policy that is maintained by the CRA should be revised at this point. There are so many products. In fact,

Finance committee  I can't comment on other sectors. We look only at food. However, the one thing we've noticed is that Canadians are actually spending less on food, despite food inflation. Obviously, other things that cost more are really impacting families. Right now, a lot of families are tra

Finance committee  The reality is that we import foods from abroad, and those foods aren't subject to our carbon price policy. If you look at Loblaws, for example, 80% of the food that Loblaws will sell is imported from elsewhere, which actually is making—and this is really the argument that we're

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I think Bill C-234 needs to pass. I think it's a must for farmers, but farmers are being taken care of by Parliament right now. Parliament is giving attention to farmers. The forgotten child in the supply chain is manufacturing, and that's kind of th

Finance committee  The challenge with the carbon tax at the farm gate is that farmers have no ability to pass on extra costs to their clients. That's the biggest challenge. I think it's being recognized in Bill C-234 right now. That's why I'm hoping it will pass. The economics around farming are fa

Finance committee  In full disclosure, our lab has been working with Minister Champagne since July in terms of food inflation and bringing him some ideas on how to tackle issues. I was at the meeting with the big five, along with Minister Champagne. I think it was actually a fruitful conversation.

Finance committee  I don't think it's a good idea for Parliament to control, fix and set retail prices. I think it really opens up a can of worms. It's a dangerous road to take. In France, and I think to a certain extent Minister Champagne is inspired by France, they actually set up a guideline f