SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 267 - Dec/13/23

Dec/13/23 4:19:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my disappointment that I am unable to rise today to table a petition on behalf of several chambers of commerce in northwest B.C. and hundreds of small businesses across Canada, concerning the CEBA loans and partial loan forgiveness. This is something supported by the Canadian Federation for Independent Business and many other organizations. It is disappointing that, so late in the session, I am not able to table such an important petition.

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Mr. Mike Morrice

Dec/13/23 4:20:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wonder if we could seek the House's unanimous consent. It sounds like there are three petitions that are particularly timely, one from the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay, one from the member for Courtenay—Alberni and one from the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. I wonder if the House might consent to hear those three particularly timely petitions.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Dec/13/23 4:20:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, respectfully, my understanding of the rules is that if we proceed to petitions, we are no longer in motions. Maybe there should be a discussion among House leaders about how to ensure we do not lose where we are in motions. We are in motions right now. We need to discuss this motion.

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The Deputy Speaker

Dec/13/23 4:21:13 p.m.
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I will go to the House leader for the NDP in a second, but if it is the will of the House to hear three petitions, we can hear those three petitions and then go back to the motion as it is predetermined here. All those opposed to the hon. member moving the motion, please say nay. An hon. member: Nay. The Deputy Speaker: The hon. House leader for the New Democratic Party.

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Mr. Peter Julian

Dec/13/23 4:21:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as you well know, allowing exceptional certain petitions in a timely manner to be presented is something that we do routinely. It is a courtesy that we offer to members of the House. We have a concurrence debate that has been moved. There is no doubt about that, but I would ask for unanimous consent to allow the member for Courtenay—Alberni to table the petition that he has referenced and that the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs has asked him to present today.

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The Deputy Speaker

Dec/13/23 4:22:12 p.m.
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You are suggesting maybe just doing the one for Courtenay—Alberni? Some hon. members: No. The Deputy Speaker: I am already hearing no, so we are not going to revisit this. I would suggest to the hon. members that they can be tabled. They will be dated today as they were introduced into the House of Commons.

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Mr. John Barlow

Dec/13/23 4:22:53 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-234

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time that my colleagues have allowed me to discuss the study from the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, entitled “Grocery Affordability: Examining Rising Food Costs In Canada”. I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, who has done a great deal of work on this subject specifically and certainly on the importance of the grocery code of conduct, for example, to try to address food affordability issues for Canadian consumers. I feel it is important to discuss this study here today because of some information that has come out most recently regarding food inflation and food costs for Canadians. When we completed this study in June this past spring, there was some pretty difficult information for Canadian consumers to hear on the increasing costs and increasing questions and concerns around affordability for Canadians and their inability to feed their families. However, that has become even more acute with the information that has come out recently regarding Canada's food price report, which came out last week. It revealed that, in 2024, Canadian families will pay $700 more for groceries than they did the previous year. Even the work we did on this initial study last spring is now almost out of date and obsolete, as food prices have continued to rise. We see now that food inflation will go up again next year between 5% and 7% depending on the commodity we are purchasing. As part of this study, we were waiting for an additional report from Dalhousie University and Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. The executive summary on the results of his study says that he and Dalhousie University have forecast that inflationary pressures and uncompetitive policies, like the carbon tax, on growing, processing and transporting food will increase the cost of wholesale food by 34% on average for all food categories by 2025.Thirty-four per cent is the increase in food costs that Canadian consumers are going to be facing over the next two years. This comes at a time when we have about two million Canadians relying on a food bank every single month, and when one in five Canadians is skipping meals because they cannot afford to put food on the table. However, I think the stats we heard in this study are even more concerning. As part of this study, we had testimony from Daily Bread Food Bank and Second Harvest. Their testimony was that, due to the dire situation, according to their figures, “food banks and other food-related programs across Canada served [5.1 million] people per month last year”. I know we are talking about two million Canadians relying on a food bank every single month, but when we include other food insecurity programs, like Second Harvest, that number goes to more than five million Canadians who are using a food security program or charity like a food bank every single month. Now, as a result of the additional information we have been provided, we are going to see higher food prices, up to maybe 34%. Again, from testimony from the Daily Bread Food Bank and Second Harvest, they are expecting the number of people using food banks and other food-related charities to climb to 8.2 million Canadians, which is roughly a 60% increase. Can members imagine that, because of inflationary policies and policies like the carbon tax, in Canada, where we have the ability to not only feed our own residents but help feed the world, we could have more than eight million Canadians relying on a regular basis on food banks and food charities to be able to feed their families? I find it to be unfathomable that in Canada we would be seeing those types of numbers. I hope everybody in the House will see those numbers as absolutely shocking. The Conservatives put forward a number of recommendations last June that we asked the government to follow-up on to try to address some of these concerning trends we are seeing. I would like to mention a couple of the recommendations we put forward that I thought were quite specific and would go a great way in addressing this crisis we are facing. Recommendation 1 said, “That the Government of Canada remove the carbon tax that is applied to all food inputs and production including all farm fuels and other...aspects of the food supply system.” Recommendation 2 was that the Government of Canada complete an economic assessment on the impact of the carbon tax and the clean fuel standard, carbon tax 2, and how this increase will affect the cost of food production, the price of food and the entire food supply chain. Recommendation 3 said, “That the Government of Canada immediately reverse its policy on front-of-package labelling.” There is only one thing we missed, which I think we would have added as a fourth recommendation had we known about it at the time. We now know the Liberal government is putting a ban on plastic food packaging, particularly for fresh fruit and vegetables, which will add an additional $8 billion to food costs. I want to really stress this point to everyone in the House and anyone who may be watching. This plastics ban is not the single-use plastics ban that the government has now been forced to reverse as a result of the decision at the court because it is unconstitutional. This is another ban on plastics. I want Canadians to picture this. As a result of this plastics ban on fresh fruit and vegetables, Canadians will be unable to purchase products they rely on, essential products they purchase every day, such as prepackaged salads, cucumbers and bananas. Many of these products are transported to Canada from outside of our country. We do not grow bananas in our climate. We have not quite gotten there with greenhouses. Because of these plastic packaging rules, companies outside of Canada will not upend their systems to meet an incomprehensible rule that they do not want to meet and cannot meet. Canadians will be going to the grocery stores and seeing empty grocery store shelves because we will no longer be able to import these products. The secondary concern, as a result of front-of-pack labelling and this plastics ban adding another $14 billion in costs on the food industry, is that Canadians are going to see skyrocketing food prices. We see the stats from Dr. Sylvain Charlebois on the carbon tax and other policies driving up food costs by 34%, and now we will add on other layers of bureaucracy. It is nonsensical and not based on science. The fresh produce industry cannot meet this deadline being imposed on it. At the same time, the Liberal loyalists in the Senate did everything they could to kill Bill C-234, which would save Canadian farmers $1 billion by 2030 on the carbon tax. We heard the Prime Minister in question period today basically questioning the carbon tax bills that farmers are sending us every single day. He said he does not think they are being forthright on what their carbon tax numbers are; he thinks they are too high. He should go out to every farm in Canada that is spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on carbon taxes to heat and cool barns, dry grains and operate family farms. These are the real-life consequences of the government's policies on carbon taxes and the impact they are having on everyday Canadians' ability to feed their families. I thought it was very important that we have an opportunity to address the study we tabled last June and try to update some of the numbers in the study that have now become obsolete as a result of the new data that has become available. Food prices are not only going up 5% to 7%. As a result of the data and the studies that have been done and as a result of the Liberals' carbon tax and other punitive policies, such as front-of-pack labelling and the ban on P2 plastics, Canadians are going to find it much more difficult to feed themselves, and millions more Canadians are going to be relying on food banks and charities. After eight years, the Prime Minister is simply not worth the cost.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Dec/13/23 4:32:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard the member for Foothills indicate that the price on pollution is going to increase the cost of groceries by 34% over the next two years. Can he explain how he can substantiate that?

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Mr. John Barlow

Dec/13/23 4:33:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to be clear. While I always appreciate the hon. member trying to put his own spin on things, what I said was that this is as a result of a study by Dr. Sylvain Charlebois of Dalhousie University. These are not numbers I am picking out of the sky. I will try to find the quote for the hon. member for Winnipeg North. It must drive him crazy to find out that there are numbers and we make decisions based on data. Dr. Sylvain Charlebois has forecast that inflationary pressures and uncompetitive policies, like the carbon tax, on growing, processing and transporting food will increase the cost of wholesale food by 34% on average for all food categories by 2025.

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Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)

Dec/13/23 4:34:00 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-58

Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate the chance to speak about agriculture in the House. I am a bit disappointed because I was hoping to speak to Bill C-58 today. My hon. colleague will know, given that he serves on the committee with me, that we are revisiting this issue. We recently had four of the five grocery CEOs appear before our committee. Of course, in particular, Mr. Galen Weston tends to stand out. He is the one the media seems to be interested in. What I found interesting when Mr. Weston appeared before our committee is that he did not seem to be aware of how many of his employees are accessing a food bank in order to get by. This is a man who commands a benefits package worth about 431 times that of his average employee. The point I really want to get to is that Mr. Weston's company, Loblaws, is one of the two holdouts on joining a grocery code of conduct. I want my hon. colleague to explain this to members of the House. If we have Walmart and Loblaws step out of the grocery code of conduct, what is that going to do for the remaining players? What does he think the federal government, in partnership with the provinces, should do as a next step? Does he believe that it is time to start enforcing a mandatory code as a result?

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Mr. John Barlow

Dec/13/23 4:35:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is correct. I was disappointed to see how the grocery CEOs were approaching the grocery code of conduct. We are now seeing Loblaws and Walmart pull out. The grocery code of conduct, in its voluntary mandate right now, likely will not move ahead unless all five main grocery retailers sign on to it. These grocery retailers need to start to take this seriously. I think Canadians need to understand that the fees and fines these retailers are burdening suppliers, producers and processors with across Canada are driving up food costs and making life unaffordable for Canadian farmers. When we have 44% of produce growers in Canada operating at a loss, that is unsustainable. A lot of that has to fall at the feet of those retailers, which are not doing their fair share.

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Mr. Robert Kitchen (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC)

Dec/13/23 4:36:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's speech and his comments recognizing the huge impact this has had on the agriculture industry, which is the backbone of my riding. So many of my agriculture producers are being challenged, whether because of a port strike in Vancouver, the restrictions, the worries about a possible port strike in Montreal and the huge costs that are being put on our farmers, which increase their costs. As the member knows, increasing their costs and transportation costs is going to eventually increase costs to consumers. Ultimately, that is going to put more people into food banks. I wonder if the member would expand on that.

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Mr. John Barlow

Dec/13/23 4:37:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very thankful to my colleague, who has always been a strong advocate for Canadian farmers and certainly his constituents in Saskatchewan. This is why I find the comments of the Prime Minister today in question period so offensive. He said that farmers are not telling the truth about the cost of the carbon tax and said that 97% of their carbon taxes are covered. That is completely false. Unlike most any other industry, Canadian farmers pay the carbon tax over and over again, from the rail lines when they transport their grain to the trucking companies when they move their cattle to the shipping companies when they are moving other commodities and buying fertilizer, fuel or feed. They pay it every single time, and those prices and increased costs are passed directly on to consumers.

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Ms. Lianne Rood (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC)

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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Mr. Ken Hardie (Fleetwood—Port Kells, Lib.)

Dec/13/23 4:48:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member knows how long Europe has gone without bananas because Europe does not allow things to be shipped in when wrapped in plastic, or if they are shipped in wrapped in plastic, there is a penalty to be paid. I also wonder if she has heard of the Nabob Coffee Company way out my way in British Columbia. The coffee pods look like they have a plastic ring inside a plastic bag, but that plastic is actually made from vegetable matter, and it is entirely compostable, so that works. Could she comment on that?

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Ms. Lianne Rood

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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Mr. Alistair MacGregor (Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, NDP)

Dec/13/23 4:50:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague will be aware that, earlier this week, Dr. Jim Stanford was one of our witnesses. He provided our committee with a brief that derives its information from publicly available data. On page five of that brief he noted that, from the beginning of 2021 to the spring of 2022, “the world price of oil tripled” from $40 a barrel to $120 a barrel and that, in that period, “the jump in the price of oil [which was] driven by a combination of geopolitics and speculation...increased fossil fuel prices by 30 times as much as the $10 carbon price increase in the same period.” We also know from previous briefs that, in the last three years, oil and gas companies have seen their net profits go up by over 1,000%. Why, when Conservatives are talking about the carbon tax, do they conveniently ignore these facts and ignore their very real role in driving up food price inflation? One cannot argue with the facts. This is clear data that is available for all members, and oil profits have had a huge impact on world food prices, far more than the carbon tax has. Will my colleague acknowledge that?

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Ms. Lianne Rood

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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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Dec/13/23 4:53:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. Unfortunately, she has just failed to answer the question. My NDP colleague asked her about the oil and gas companies' exorbitant, astronomical, skyrocketing profits, which are having a very significant impact on the cost of groceries. I would like my colleague to talk about oil and gas profits. I hope she heard the question.

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Ms. Lianne Rood

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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Food