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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 270

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
January 29, 2024 11:00AM

SummarySpren for "Pandemic"

Context: House Hansard - 270 - Jan/29/24
Mr. Richard Lehoux (Beauce, CPC)
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. I am very honoured to rise today in the House to represent the people of my riding, Beauce, and also, more importantly, on the issue of Canada's food security and sovereignty. After studying the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, all of my thoughts on the matter have unfortunately been confirmed. I will take a brief moment to read the conclusion of the report: ...there was no national emergency preparedness and response plan for Canada's food system and food security, despite the government having identified food as a critical infrastructure sector long before the COVID-19 pandemic began. And although AAFC had two emergency plans in place, it acknowledged that they were insufficient to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. When I read the recommendations in this report, I see that these are watered down recommendations to mask the current government's failures. In every recommendation, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts asks the departments concerned for status reports. However, in my opinion, it does not really go far enough. As Conservatives, we have been defending farmers and families from the beginning. We understand that food security starts on the farm and that our government needs to be there to support those who put food on our tables. Under this Liberal government, the price of food has skyrocketed because of the carbon tax. Farmers are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. Canadians, too, are finding it harder and harder to put food on the table, as we have seen from the record use of food banks in our communities. We have also seen a decline in our relationships with many countries, since the government has failed many times in the negotiation of trade agreements. Some countries do not even want to reopen negotiations with us because of the government's incompetence. That is why it is so important to have a national food system that works and that we can depend on today and in the future. It is very simple. With grocery prices the highest they have ever been in our country, it is up to this government to find a way to reduce the cost of food. The easiest place to start is on the farm. A great way to start would be to pass the original Bill C-234 as soon as possible so as to exempt farmers from the carbon tax on propane and natural gas used to heat livestock buildings and dry grain. I am appalled that the Prime Minister and his senators gutted this important bill in the Senate. The bill had the unanimous support of all parties in the House but one, the Liberal Party of Canada. This legislation also had the backing of every ag sector stakeholder I talked to across the country. These farmers need relief from this crippling tax that is destroying their businesses and driving food prices sky-high. I talked to lots of farmers in my riding, and every one of them endorsed this bill. Winter is here, and they are very worried about how they are going to heat their henhouses and hog barns all winter long. As the official opposition agriculture critic and as a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, I have personally attended every meeting since I was elected. We hear the same stories year after year. Over the holidays, I volunteered at Moisson Beauce, a food bank in my riding. While preparing Christmas hampers for struggling families, about 2,500 in a single day, I learned that Moisson Beauce is now experiencing record usage and no longer receives enough donations to meet demand. That is not the Canada I remember. We are at a point where it is cheaper to import food than to produce it locally. One comment I hear all too often from the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois is that the carbon tax does not apply in Quebec. That is absolutely false. The carbon tax applies in Quebec directly and indirectly. I can show countless receipts from farmers for propane, for example, that include the federal price on pollution. As I was saying, the carbon tax is also paid indirectly when we import goods from other provinces. Quebec is not self-sufficient; we import a lot of products from provinces that pay the entire carbon tax and that tax is passed on to us, the consumers, either through inflated prices or the cost of transportation. Agriculture Carbon Alliance wrote to every federal member to express their full support for this bill. The alliance is 17 national agricultural groups representing more than 190,000 farms in Canada. Canadian farmers are stewards of the land. They are very concerned about their animals and the environment. They work so hard to feed our families and support our economy. The lack of support from the Liberal government is incredible. I must mention the rural members of the Liberal caucus. I cannot believe that only three Liberals voted in favour of this legislation. I suppose that only three of them want to keep their seat in the next election. The polls speak for themselves. Who could forget what the Minister of Rural Economic Development said? She said that, if Canadians want relief, they should elect more Liberal members. If those rural Liberal members think they will ever get the farm vote back, they are sorely mistaken. Another looming problem that will impact Canada's food security and food sovereignty is the Liberal plan to outlaw single-use plastics, a plan that the courts recently struck down but that the government plans to appeal at taxpayers' expense. A study by the Canadian Produce Marketing Association makes it clear that if this ban goes through, fruit and vegetable prices will rise by up to 34%. The report also indicates that the availability of Canadian products could be reduced by half. We will also see a 50% increase in food waste. Conservatives will always stand up for farmers and, most importantly, for common sense. Canadians are suffering. Many of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. How can the government turn its back on them when all they want is to feed their families affordably? If the government does not take action, our farm families will keep disappearing, our country will become even more dependent on food imports, and our food system will be even more vulnerable. Right now, a vegetable grown in Mexico costs less at the grocery store than one grown locally. Does that make sense? It is contrary to their entire climate change ideology. Canadians can count on the Conservatives to change that situation, which makes no sense. Canadians do not need departmental progress reports. They need real action to avert a disaster in our national food system. With out-of-control inflation and interest rates that are still very high, Canadians will continue to experience financial difficulties. This report sheds light on the situation and shows that it is extremely important that we learn from the pandemic and take the appropriate action. The Prime Minister has increased the size of the public service by 40% since he has been in office, so how is it that these departments cannot manage to do their work properly? That is incompetence. At the end of her speech, my colleague from Lambton—Kent—Middlesex will move a motion to get our national food system back on track in order to guarantee our food security and food sovereignty in the future. I sincerely hope that my colleagues will take this issue seriously and that we can come together to do the right thing for all Canadians by voting in favour of this motion.
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Context: House Hansard - 270 - Jan/29/24
Ms. Lianne Rood (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, CPC)
  • Jan/29/24 8:02:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to talk about the report from the public accounts committee entitled “Protecting Canada's Food System During the COVID-19 Pandemic”. In this report, we learn that the NDP-Liberal government spent $515 million, more than half a billion dollars, in various funding envelopes “increased risk of food insecurity”. This is the key question: How much food security did Canadians get for more than half a billion dollars? Well, the short answer is that Canadians got less, not more, food security. They are getting less, thanks to policies of the NDP-Liberal government, which continue to increase food production costs, food transportation costs, food spoilage and food prices and reduce food supply, food variety, food freshness and food security. First, I ask members to cast their mind back to the pandemic. During the NDP-Liberal COVID lockdowns, despite Conservatives sending a warning, along with Canadian producers, processors and suppliers, the NDP-Liberal government failed miserably to plan ahead. It had no plan for getting temporary foreign workers nor seasonal agriculture workers in and out of Canada when and where they were needed. There was no plan for bringing workers into Canada for greenhouse producers starting in January 2021 nor for field producers throughout their planting and harvesting seasons. At the end of the season, some farmers were even faced with the challenges of workers who were not able to return to their home country, for example, Trinidad and Tobago, and there was little or no diplomatic help available for those Canadian producers. That was an epic fail thanks to the NDP-Liberal governing party. Sadly, it does not end there. For the past two years or more, food prices have increased by 8%, 9% or more year over year. Vegetables are seeing the biggest price increases. As a result, Canadian families are cutting back on purchases of vegetables and other healthy foods for their children, and about 20% of Canadians are reporting skipping a meal each day. Food banks across the country are seeing record numbers of visits by Canadians to the tune of over two million families. This is the very definition of food insecurity. The costly coalition of NDP-Liberals has been sleeping at the wheel as Canadian families pay more and more for the necessities of life. With the carbon tax one and carbon tax two combined by April Fool's Day 2030, the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government want to charge Canadian farmers and truckers 61¢ for every litre of fuel they put in their farm implements and trucks in carbon tax. It is not rocket science. It is basic math that the NDP-Liberals just do not seem to get. If it costs more to grow food and it costs more to ship food, it is going to cost Canadian families more to buy food. The Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, said that the carbon tax announcements that have it going up, that increases inflation each year. The lead author of Canada's Food Price Report 2023, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, has pointed out that the carbon tax has made business expenses go up. Up and down the food chain, Dr. Charlebois points to a “compounding effect” as the supply chain is exposed to increased costs from the carbon tax. Again, if it costs the farmer more to grow food and truckers more to ship food, it is going to cost Canadians more to buy food. How do we solve the problem of rising food prices and this Prime Minister's costly coalition? Well, first things first, we need to axe the carbon tax. The leader of the opposition and those of us on this side of the House want to offer Canadian families relief from the carbon tax. We want to put an end to possibly the most out-of-touch-with-reality, regressive, punitive and unfair tax Canadians have been asked to pay. However, there is more. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change has added plastic to the list of toxic substances. Yes, members heard that right. Plastic is a toxic substance according to the environment minister. Although the courts recently struck down the NDP-Liberal government's single-use plastics ban, the environment minister has another evil trick up his sleeve. Last August 1, the environment minister issued a notice for his proposed ban on primary plastic packaging, meaning the packaging for produce and meats that we see in the grocery stores. At meetings of the agriculture committee on December 7 and 11, 2023, I asked the chief executive officers of Walmart Canada, Loblaw and Metro what the impact would be for them and their customers if this ban were to be implemented. The CEOs of both Loblaw and Metro said that, if the NDP-Liberal government proceeded with a ban on primary food packaging, it would increase food costs by approximately $6 billion a year, severely impair competition, threaten the availability of food and increase spoilage, meaning more food waste. Primary plastic packaging serves as a hygienic barrier to contaminants; it delays spoilage, extends best before dates, reduces waste and optimizes perishables' nutritional value. Plastic packaging is lightweight, and it reduces the amount of fuel used in transport compared with other alternatives. What most consumers do not realize is that the job that plastic does for fresh fruit and vegetables is done long before it ever hits the grocery store shelves. According to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, on average, Canadians spend about $1 billion per month on fruit and vegetables. Only about 12.5% of the fruits and vegetables Canadians consume are produced in Canada. Canadians consume seven times as much imported fruit and vegetables as domestically produced fruit and vegetables. I am sure part of that is because of our weather patterns here. Imported produce can take weeks to reach us by ship. Plastic packaging plays a crucial role in keeping food from overripening and spoiling before it gets to Canada. At this time, there is no cost-effective alternative solution to plastic packaging that is available on a global scale. If the NDP-Liberal government were really and truly concerned about food costs and food security, one might think that it would conduct a regulatory impact analysis. However, one would be wrong. At the agriculture committee on November 30, 2023, I asked the deputy agriculture minister if a regulatory impact analysis on a primary plastic packaging ban for produce had been done. She testified that it had not. This is irresponsible. The Canadian Produce Marketing Association, or CPMA, did a regulatory impact analysis of the proposed primary plastic packaging ban. It found that the NDP-Liberal environment minister's ban on primary plastic packaging could increase the cost of fresh produce by 34%. It could also reduce the availability of fresh produce for Canadians by more than 50%, including the near total elimination of all value-added products, reducing market value by approximately $5.6 billion. The ban could increase fresh produce waste by more than 50%. Furthermore, it could increase the production and release of greenhouse gases from the produce supply chain by more than 50%. The environment minister should take note. Another finding from the CPMA impact analysis suggests that increased fresh produce costs will lead to reduced availability and reduced consumption, therefore increasing health costs by over $1 billion each year. Furthermore, the ban will have a disproportionate impact on the cost and availability of fresh produce in rural and remote regions of Canada. When presented with the consequences of the NDP-Liberal environment minister's ban, almost two-thirds of Canadian consumers expressed concern. Finally, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association's regulatory impact analysis reported that the proposed regulations will lead to an increased risk of food safety incidents and food-borne illnesses. In short, the NDP-Liberal environment minister is painting a target on the back of every single Canadian with the threat posed to their health and well-being by his ill-advised, non-evidence-based, irresponsible ban on primary plastic packaging. As I conclude, I want to move: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, be not now concurred in, but that it be recommitted to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts for further consideration, with a view to recommend that the agriculture sector be exempt from any federal carbon tax in order to maintain food-security and preparedness for future emergencies.” It is always an honour to rise here on behalf of the people I represent in Lambton—Kent—Middlesex and the farmers and producers who produce the great-quality food that we feed Canadians. I want to thank them for what they do.
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