44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 13, 2023 02:00PM
- Dec/13/23 4:38:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am here today to talk about grocery affordability and examining rising food costs in Canada. The agriculture committee submitted this report in June after a fairly lengthy study.
This is a topic that has been near and dear to my heart for many years. I come from a produce background. Having a family farm and a produce business feeding Canadians is something that my family has prided ourselves on for our entire lives. It has been our livelihood. Making sure we can sell an affordable product to Canadians so Canadian families can go to the grocery store and afford to buy healthy, nutritious food at a reasonable cost is something that all farm producers want in this country.
Unfortunately, we are in a time right now when we are not seeing that. Families are struggling. I hear this on a daily basis. They are struggling to afford the basic necessities, to heat their homes, to pay their mortgages and to afford food.
Recently, I talked to someone from my community who runs one of the food banks. I asked him how things have been and if he has noticed an increase in demand for food. He said that they are so busy that he has not even had the time to sit down to look at the numbers. The food just keeps coming and people are showing up at the door for food. He said he hears from folks that they just need to get food for one month or one week, and that they will be okay in a couple of weeks, they just a bit of food right now. He said he tells people they can visit the food bank as long as they need to. He does not want them putting money on their credit cards and racking up credit card bills to eat. They can go to the food bank as long as they need to and pay off their bills. The food bank will be there to support them to make sure they can feed their families and kids.
That, to me, was very striking. Never in my lifetime have I imagined, living in Canada, that I would see people suffering so badly that they could not afford food to feed their families, especially when I know Canada produces some of the best in the world and we have access to fresh food here like we have never before.
One of the things making it more expensive for farmers to produce their food is the carbon tax. That was talked about in this report. I look at all the steps that are taken along the journey at my farm, in particular, speaking from experience, and when the cost of fuel increases, it impacts the cost of doing business. It is not just on the fuel we use to bring the goods from the field into the warehouse, from the warehouse into the packing plant and then from the packing plant to food distribution centres, it is all along the supply chain.
Packaging is one area where I have noticed an increase over the years, especially during COVID. People tried to get packaging for their goods to sell to consumers, consumers were eating more at home instead of at restaurants, and when the buying habits of consumers changed, it put a big demand on grocery stores and producers to make sure they could keep getting the goods to grocery stores. The cost of packaging increased partially not only because of the increased cost due to the carbon tax in getting the packaging and all the steps it takes to make the packaging, but also because of demand for the packaging.
The reason I bring up the cost of packaging is that we have recently seen that the government has a new plastics ban proposed, not the first one that was struck down by the Supreme Court, but the second plastics packaging ban. One of the recommendations in this report was, “ensuring [the government's] plastic reduction requirements are attainable by extending the implementation timeline for a single-use plastics ban and working with retailers to ensure that commercially viable alternatives to plastics, in particular for packaging designed to extend the shelf-life of food and limit food waste, will be available in the needed quantities.”
I would like to take a moment to educate those who may be watching at home right now. This proposed plastics ban for the fruit and vegetable industry is new. It is not the single-use plastics ban. What consumers need to know is that two-thirds of the fresh produce we eat and consume in this country is imported from other countries. While we have a great area in Leamington where we grow a lot of vegetables in greenhouses, and every year we are seeing more and more greenhouse vegetable production come on line, we are still reliant on most of our food coming as imports from other countries.
The average person does not realize, before food ever hits their grocery store shelves, it has been on a ship coming from somewhere across the world. Whether it is food from South America, South Africa or other parts of Africa, and a lot comes from South America, it sits in refrigerated containers on ships going across the ocean to get to Canada. Then it has to be unloaded at a port and put on a truck. Those trucks come from the United States, and sometimes they came through Montreal or B.C., but for the most part, they come through the U.S. A lot of it comes into Toronto at the Ontario Food Terminal.
To keep vegetables and fruit fresh for their journey, and it can be weeks on end before they ever see a grocery store shelf, they need to be in packaging that is resilient and that will hold up the quality of the produce.
Produce is mostly water. It is just a fact of life. Fruit and vegetables are mostly water. I do not know the exact percentage, but it is about 90% or so. If we are trying to ship water in the form of fruits and vegetables and trying to keep it fresh to get it onto the grocery store shelves, it needs to be in something that is durable to preserve that freshness and quality.
The number one consumed product in the world is bananas, and they have to be shipped in plastic to stop them from ripening on route so that we can ripen them once they get into the country. If this new plastics ban goes ahead, we will not see bananas on the shelves anymore. In fact, in the U.S. people have said, and some suppliers have said, that if the plastics ban on produce goes forth in Canada, we will not be seeing things on shelves such as bagged salads and all the premade things, such as precut veggies and precut fruit.
We are not going to see berries in clamshells. Grapes come in bags. Some potatoes come in plastic bags. It is for a reason, which is to keep it fresh in our home so we have time to consume it before it goes bad. If this ban were to go through, we would see huge amounts of food waste, which would increase greenhouse gas emissions. We would see up to 50% food waste, and the greenhouse gas emissions from food waste would double.
This would also have a catastrophic impact on our food security in this country. We are not just talking about affordability for Canadians. We are now talking about food security because of the NDP-Liberal government's own policies, which are creating this scenario.
I also want to touch on the carbon tax. I have some folks in my riding who have written to me recently to talk about those increases to the cost of their production that they are not able to recoup. They are grain farmers, and one grain farmer reached out to tell me that their gas bill last month for drying their corn was $39,000. That was just for one month. The carbon tax portion of that was $10,000 for one month, and that farmer will never be able to recoup that $10,000. They will not be able to put it back into their business to innovate and make sure they are doing what they can to help the environment.
I have a chicken farmer in my riding who gave me his gas bills for the whole year. He is paying $15,000 in carbon taxes this year just to heat one barn.
The government's own policies, whether the new plastics ban or the carbon tax, are creating unaffordable food for Canadians, and the government should be doing more to make sure that Canadians can afford to feed themselves by changing its policies and axing the carbon tax. Canadians know that Conservatives would axe the carbon tax. We would make life more affordable for Canadians because, after eight years of this Prime Minister, he is just not worth the cost.
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- Dec/13/23 4:49:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is a great one. The answer is that, at this point, there is no commercially viable option to the plastic packaging available right now. It is a global supply chain. It is not just Canada that we are working with. We are working with the globe. As I said, we import two-thirds of our fresh food in this country from other countries.
If there were a commercially viable option at this time, I am sure that retailers and farmers, anybody who needs to package produce, would be using it. Because we are a global supply chain, and because we rely on two-thirds of our food to be imported, it means those countries that we import from also have to be on board with this.
If there were an alternative that was globally available at a good cost, because we do not want to do things that are going to increase the cost for Canadians, I know that farmers and the industry would be working very hard to be able to find that alternative. We heard that from the grocers themselves, as well. We are looking for alternatives. They are just not there yet. Once they are, I am sure that the industry will make sure to do all it can to implement them.
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- Dec/13/23 4:51:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy working with my colleague at the agriculture committee. We worked really hard together on the code of conduct, which I did not get a chance to talk about yet.
For the last several years, I have been a huge supporter of getting a code of conduct in place. This week, we heard that Loblaw and Walmart have no intention at this point in signing the code that is before them right now, but we have all the other retailers on board. The code of conduct is going to make it easier and better for farmers and suppliers, who generally face steep fines and fees that they have to pay just for the privilege of selling their goods on grocery store shelves. That also contributes to higher grocery prices, when farmers have to find a way to recoup the costs in the form of the fees and fines they pay to retailers for selling their goods.
I hope we can see the grocery code of conduct ratified and see all parties sign onto it to make sure we can treat our farmers and our suppliers fairly so they can continue to supply nutritious food to Canadians.
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- Dec/13/23 4:53:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always find it a pleasure to work with my hon. colleague as well.
The reality is that the government policies are increasing food costs. Part of it is the carbon tax. Families already cannot afford food right now, and they are going to have to pay another $700 to feed their families next year.
Conservatives believe that families should be able to keep more money in their pockets. We will axe the carbon tax to help them have more affordable food.
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