Finance committee  No, I have not heard any of those accounts.

Finance committee  Perhaps I misunderstood the question, because the GST rebate is talked about a lot. I'm not sure if those are synonymous with one another. The GST rebate does help incrementally, but it doesn't actually help the overall crisis that folks are finding themselves in.

Finance committee  I'm not sure I have any thoughts, other than that it's probably not something that would be immediately useful to most of our users.

Finance committee  There's no question that it would have an impact on those folks immediately. That is one of the largest groups of people we serve in the work we do. I think immediate changes of that nature would be necessary. I think that would have a huge impact.

Finance committee  That would be incredible, yes.

Finance committee  It's 78.5%.

Finance committee  That's since 2019.

Finance committee  We are familiar with that concept. We work a great deal on changing people's perspectives on what are called “best before” dates. It is a huge problem and it's something that we benefit from in the rescued food program that we implement.

Finance committee  No. We don't have any policy research.

Finance committee  It's a great idea, and it's something we benefit from. The 2.6 million pounds of food that we rescued last year—and we're on track to rescue more this year; hopefully, it will be 2.9 million pounds—is all food that is very close to or at its “best before” date. This is excellent food and nutritionally dense food that is very useful.

Finance committee  Again, I think anything that would help all Canadians reduce their cost of living, whether it's through taxes or the cost of groceries, would certainly make a huge difference.

Finance committee  That is a very big question. I'm not sure how to answer that.

Finance committee  Absolutely. In our facility, we are focusing on local sustainable food systems. Being that we are operating on Vancouver Island, we're always looking at ways to create incentivization for farmers and local food producers, because we think that while that food may be more expensive in the interim, ultimately it's going to reduce the costs of delivering more food locally to more people.

Finance committee  Somewhat....

Finance committee  I think my message is similar to my remarks that I made in the beginning, and that is that we are in a crisis and there is no end in sight. The numbers I cited today were from March 2023, and that is a long time ago now in the food landscape. We are seeing unprecedented growth in terms of users of food banks.