44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 6, 2024 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to resume debate on this private member's bill, Bill C-234, pursuant to the proposed amendments to the bill from the Senate.
Canada has the best farmers and food processors in the world. We are a global leader in agricultural production, and the sector is of great importance to our economy, to trade and to jobs. I know that in my riding of West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, we have some of the best small-scale farms in the country. The government understands that farmers are essential to our communities and to Canada's economy, and that is why it agrees with the intent of Bill C-234.
Supporting our farmers is, of course, of great importance. However, the bill is not appropriately structured to achieve this objective. It is important to deliver support for farmers that is effective in helping them ramp up production without undermining important goals like addressing climate change, which itself poses a severe threat to agricultural production.
Putting a price on pollution is a cornerstone of Canada's climate plan. It is widely recognized as the most efficient means to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to more intense wildfires, droughts and floods, while putting money back in people's pockets and driving investment in cleaner alternatives. In B.C., of course, there has been a price on pollution for more than 15 years; it remains in place today. It is instead of the federal system, which applies only in provinces that do not bring in their own carbon pricing system.
Farmers are on the front lines of climate change, facing ever-increasing risks of natural disasters to their operations. Pollution pricing was designed to take into account the unique needs of farmers. Of course I have seen it first hand with a number of the farms in my riding, where historic droughts and water restrictions actually brought in a state of emergency that restricted access to water for some of these farms. I have also seen in recent years the crushing impact of the heat dome fuelled by climate change.
That is why, for all provinces where the federal carbon price is in effect, Canada's agriculture is already receiving significant relief under the federal carbon pollution pricing system compared to other sectors. Through the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, the federal system exempts gasoline and diesel used in eligible farming machinery, as well as biological emissions, such that roughly 97% of on-farm emissions are not subject to a price on pollution.
Greenhouse operators also received upfront relief of 80% on the fuel charge on propane and marketable natural gas. Additionally, farmers in provinces where the federal system is in place can receive a refundable tax credit, which, overall, returns the estimated total fuel charge proceeds in these provinces related to farm use of natural gas and propane for heating and drying activities, to help farmers transition to lower-carbon ways of farming.
This year, farmers in rural areas will benefit from the doubling of the rural top-up for pollution price rebates, which will give households an extra 20% of the value of the rebates in backstop jurisdictions. Putting a price on pollution and returning the proceeds to farmers helps them transition to lower-carbon ways of farming by providing support to farmers while also maintaining a price signal to reduce emissions. These are the right ways to help farmers increase production while addressing climate change that threatens production.
Unfortunately, even as amended by the Senate, which did make some steps in the right direction, the bill does not reflect Canada's commitment to climate change or incentivize farmers to switch to less carbon-intensive solutions. It also risks weakening Canada's efforts to lower its greenhouse gas emissions. It is true that one amendment would remove—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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Madam Speaker, I would note that Canada's emissions have dropped by a bigger percentage than those of any other G7 country since 2019.
It is true that one amendment would remove the relief associated with heating or cooling a building or similar structure used for raising or housing livestock or growing crops, but the relief for grain drying would remain, as would amendments to expand qualifying farm fuels to include natural gas and propane. The government does not believe that making it free to pollute is the right way to proceed.
We are taking action where it makes a real, positive difference in supporting farmers to make cleaner choices. As part of our strengthened climate plan and the 2030 emissions reduction plan, the Government of Canada has committed over $1.5 billion to accelerate the agricultural sector's progress on reducing emissions, while remaining a global leader in sustainable agriculture. This includes almost $500 million for the agricultural clean technology program to create an enabling environment for the development and adoption of clean technology that will help drive the changes required to achieve a low-carbon economy and promote sustainable growth in Canada's agriculture and agri-food sector. This program is helping Canadians in the agricultural sector to innovate and to adopt clean technologies.
Farmers are taking action. They have been leading the adoption of climate-friendly practices like precision agriculture technology and low-till techniques that can help reduce emissions and save them both time and money. I have seen it in my riding with local companies; Terramera, for example, has been partnering with Microsoft to share information on precision agriculture at landscape scale. I have seen the sustainable farming practices being implemented locally that are making a big difference on climate change and on water use. The government is continuing to take action to support them.
Budget 2022, for example, provided $150 million for a resilient agricultural landscape program, cost-shared with provinces and territories, to support carbon sequestration and adaptation and to address other environmental co-benefits. It also provided $100 million to the federal granting councils to support post-secondary research in developing technologies and crop varieties that will allow for net-zero emission agriculture, and it provided $469 million to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to expand the agricultural climate solutions program's on-farm climate action fund.
Budget 2022 also renewed the Canadian agricultural partnership, which delivers a range of support programs for farmers and agriculture, including federal-only programs and programs developed in partnership with provincial and territorial governments. Each year, these programs provide about $600 million to support agricultural innovation, sustainability, competitiveness and market development. The Canadian agricultural partnership also includes a comprehensive suite of business risk management programs to help Canadian farmers cope with volatile markets and disaster situations, delivering approximately $2.3 billion of support, on average, per year. These are the right ways to help farmers increase production while addressing climate change that threatens production.
Our pollution pricing system is simply about recognizing that pollution has a cost, and about encouraging cleaner growth and a more sustainable future. The federal government does not keep any direct proceeds from pollution pricing under this system. Canada's approach to pollution pricing is not only one of the best ways to fight climate change; it also puts more money back into the pockets of Canadians. The direct proceeds from the federal pollution price are returned in the jurisdiction from which they were collected, to help with cost of living challenges while keeping the incentive to pollute less.
As 2024 kicks off, the Government of Canada reiterates its commitment to pollution pricing and its crucial role in meeting targets to cut emissions to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Estimates show that pollution pricing will contribute about a third of the total reductions in emissions that will occur between now and 2030. Putting a price on pollution and returning the bulk of the proceeds through rebates provides support not just for farmers but also for consumers and businesses, while also maintaining an incentive to reduce emissions.
Canada has been a world leader in fighting climate change through pollution pricing, and we should not do anything that would undermine this achievement, as Bill C-234 would for the reasons I have set out today. I am thankful for the opportunity to make the government's position on this piece of legislation clear.
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Madam Speaker, it is nice to be able to resume where I left off back in December.
Just to refresh the memory of everyone in this place, we were discussing the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
I have been a proud member of that committee for six years now and I would say that it is the best standing committee out of any committee of the House, because we often arrive at our decisions on a consensus model. We certainly have our differences, but the collegiality stems from the fact that, no matter what political party we represent, we all represent farmers in our respective ridings and have a great deal of respect for the work they do.
This particular study is unusual, if we look at the long list of studies the agriculture committee usually embarks on, in that we are dealing more with a retail issue, which of course is the subject of food price inflation. I am happy to say that this 10th report was the result of a unanimous vote on my motion for a study. The study was also backed up by a unanimous vote in the House of Commons when the NDP used our opposition day to move a motion backing up the committee's work.
Given the brutal food price inflation rates that many Canadians have been experiencing over the last couple of years, the political and public pressure of the moment, I think, really helped focus parliamentarians' efforts on this important issue in making sure we were paying it the attention it deserved, given what many of our constituents were telling us they were suffering through. Therefore, it was nice to see that unanimous vote and the fact that we were able to get into this study.
If we look at the news these days and the experts who research this particularly brutal problem, we already know that a record number of Canadians are having to access food banks. I certainly hear from my constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford that they are having to make those difficult decisions every single week. It has affected not only the quality of food they have been able to buy, but also the quantity of food.
I think that is an enduring shame on our country, given that we pride ourselves on being an agricultural powerhouse. If we look at our standing vis-à-vis other nations around the world, we are a very wealthy country, but what we have seen over the last number of decades is that wealth is increasingly being concentrated in fewer hands, and too many of our fellow citizens are struggling to get by on the basic necessities of life.
I think this is a call to action for all parliamentarians. It is obvious that the policies we have put in place over the last 40 or 50 years and this sort of obscene corporate deference we have seen from successive Liberal and Conservative governments and the neo-Liberal orthodoxy that exists are not serving our fellow citizens right. We need to take a critical look at why that is.
This report contains a number of recommendations. I want to focus on a few of them, particularly on recommendations 11 and 13. Recommendation 11 is something that we heard not only in the course of this study, but also in other studies. It deals with the fact that many people who work in the food value chain, particularly the ones on the other side of the ledger from where the retail grocers come into play, have long been calling for a grocery code of conduct.
Initially, the calls were for a voluntary code. I think there was a tremendous amount of goodwill and a bit of leeway given to the industry to figure this out on its own and to come up with something whereby all players could develop the issue and have faith in it. However, what we have seen recently is that some of the big grocery retailers, namely Loblaws and Walmart, are now indicating they are uncomfortable with the direction the code is taking. In my humble opinion, this code simply cannot work if it is going to exclude major players like Loblaws and Walmart, so we may be arriving at a point at which the government needs to step in and enforce a mandatory code. That way, the rules are clear, concise and transparent, and all players in the food supply value chain can understand what they are and abide by them.
What we are seeing is that there is a complete lack of trust in the grocery retail sector, and for good reason. Grocery retailers have been accused and found guilty of fixing the price of bread. They have engaged in practices that, on the surface, look a lot like collusion. They have often followed each other's leads in setting prices and so on. Recently Loblaws was forced to climb down from its decision to reduce the discounts. There used to be a 50% discount on items that had to be sold that day. Often people are looking for those kinds of bargains. Loblaws was going to reduce that to 30%. That company consistently shows that it is unable to read the room and that it is completely tone deaf to the public environment in which it is operating.
Not only have consumers lost trust in grocery retailers, but on the other side, the suppliers, the food manufacturers and the hard-working men and women who work in primary production and farming have also lost trust, because when they are trying to get their goods put into a grocery market, and let us understand that 80% of Canada's grocery retail market is controlled by just five companies, which is a brutal situation and a totally unfair stranglehold on the market by those five companies, they were often subjected to hidden fees and fines for which they had no explanation.
As such, I am glad to see that recommendation 11 calls for a mandatory and enforceable grocery code of conduct.
I am also happy to see in this report recommendation 13, which asks the Government of Canada to strengthen the Competition Bureau's mandate and its ability to ensure competition in the grocery sector. The first two bullet points were about giving the Competition Bureau more legislative muscle through the Competition Act and making sure the competitive thresholds the Competition Bureau uses to evaluate mergers and acquisitions ensure that competition does not suffer.
I think, based on the hard work of this study and the recommendations of this report, we have actually seen legislative change come to this place, and it was great to see, in particular, Bill C-56 receive a unanimous vote in the House of Commons. It has passed the Senate, and it has now become a statute of Canada by virtue of the Governor General.
There are more measures contained in Bill C-59, and our leader, the member from Burnaby South's private member's bill also includes a number of very important changes. Of course members of Parliament are going to have the opportunity tomorrow, after question period, to vote on that bill, and Canadians will be watching to see which members of Parliament are serious about stepping up to fix that particular problem.
I also want to talk about the supplementary report that I included as the New Democratic member of the committee, because committee reports reflect the majority view of the committee. In the case of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, that is almost always the unanimous view of the committee. I do not think I have ever really seen a dissenting report, but sometimes some recommendations that some members would like to have seen added to the report do not get in there.
I agree absolutely with the main thrust of the report. I think the recommendations were very strong. There were some additional ones, some supplementary ones, that I would have liked to see added. We heard from a number of witnesses who asked our committee to recommend that the government embark on legislative recognition of the right to food, so one of our recommendations would have been:
that the Government of Canada acknowledge its obligation as a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights to respect, protect, and fulfill the human right to food by adopting a framework law that would enshrine this right in Canadian law and require the federal government to legislate binding, specific, and measurable targets toward realizing the policy outcomes it set out in 2019 in “The Food Policy for Canada”.
Again, when so many in our population are going hungry, it is incumbent upon us as legislators and policy makers to really step up to the plate and meet that need in the moment with specific action. I think that, given that this recommendation came from people who are directly involved in the national food bank network and are dealing with this issue every single day, we would do well as policy makers to listen to that on-the-ground expertise and follow through.
I also want to take some time in the final four minutes that I have to really recognize two witnesses who appeared before our committee. They are both economics professors who go against the prevailing orthodoxy of corporate deference that so many economics professors practise. They are, particularly, Professor D.T. Cochrane and Professor Jim Stanford, who I think offer a refreshing and alternative view to the dominant orthodoxy, to look critically at why systems are the way they are.
I just want to quote Dr. Jim Stanford:
Greed is not new. Greed long predates the pandemic, but greed has had a good run in Canada since the pandemic. After-tax profits in Canada during the pandemic or since the pandemic have increased to their highest share of GDP in history. Amidst a social, economic and public health emergency, companies have done better than they ever have.
In response to one of my questions, he went on to say:
At the top of the list, there's no doubt about it, is the oil and gas sector. The excess profits earned there since the pandemic account for about one-quarter of the total mass of profits across the 15 sectors I identified in that work. The increased prices that embody those huge profit margins then trickle through the rest of the supply chain. Food processors have to pay that, so they have higher costs, nominally, but then they add their own higher profit margin on top of that. The same goes for the food retail sector. By the time the consumer gets it, there's been excess profits added at several steps of the whole supply chain. That magnifies the final impact on consumer price inflation.
Two things have been true over the last number of years. Canadians have been suffering through brutal inflation. They have seen the cost of almost everything rise to almost unsustainable levels, in fact, to unsustainable levels for too many of our fellow citizens. That is one truth of which we can see empirical evidence.
The other truth we are dealing with is that since 2019, many corporate sectors have been raking in the cash. Those two facts exist side by side, and we know for a fact that when profits are increasing in many different corporate sectors that Canadians rely on, that money has to come from somewhere, and it has been coming directly from the wallets of the constituents that I represent, the constituents that every MP in this place represents from coast to coast to coast.
I will wrap up my speech there by saying that this was an important report and these are important recommendations. I am glad to have been a member of the committee that produced this report. Of course, I will be voting to concur in it. With that I will conclude my remarks.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my colleague, with whom I sit on the agriculture committee. Obviously, in this report, there was an examination of some of the input costs that have caused food prices to rise.
My question for my hon. colleague is this. On our opposition day motion to report Bill C-234 back to the Senate unamended, will he be voting with us as Conservatives to make sure that farmers get help in decreasing the inputs when it comes to Bill C-234?
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- Feb/6/24 6:47:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I sit on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food with my colleague, and I have appreciated his collegiality and the degree of collaboration we have been able to find on our shared values. As a relatively new member of Parliament, I always enjoy the opportunity to meet new people from across the country with shared interests.
This is a timely conversation for us to have, because just this morning, part two of this particular conversation continued to unfold at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. There is no question that Canadians are feeling the impact of food prices. It is on their minds. It is something we are aware of, something we are sensitive to and something we are acting on.
It is important, in the context of this conversation, to be mindful of how we have come to this point and what factors are contributing, whether they include the very difficult years of the pandemic and the postpandemic years we are in now; supply chain disruptions that have occurred as a result of conflicts, such as that between Russia and Ukraine happening in Europe at the moment; or various other contributing factors that we are seeing take place around the world. Canada is not immune to these challenges.
There are a few pieces in particular that I would like to highlight, and my colleague raised this a few moments ago, specifically, in relation to a grocery code of conduct. My understanding, having listened intently to the position of the government, my Conservative colleagues, my New Democrat colleagues and my Bloc Québécois colleagues, is this: We all agree that there needs to be a greater degree of transparency in order to deal with the volatility and instability existing in this industry and in the market in order to help Canadians with the increased costs of food.
Canadians want the big grocery chains to be transparent about the prices they are paying for their food. Many departments are involved; many regulations as well. There is no easy, single or universal solution. The food on our plates is tied to several international economic systems. Between the field and the plate, producers, processors and retailers are each dealing with supply problems and market access challenges.
We expect this code to improve interactions between retailers and processors by allowing predictable, transparent and equitable business relations. It is through collaboration between businesses that this code will be more effective, which, ultimately, will be beneficial both to the industry as a whole and to consumers.
One of the disappointing discussions that emerged out of the Standing Committee on Agriculture's study on this particular matter a few weeks ago, when we spoke to executives from Canada's five main grocery chains, was that there is not unanimity. In order for a code of conduct vis-à-vis groceries to be effective, we need to have the buy-in of all those involved. Unfortunately, we have not seen that to date. I note that my colleague from the NDP is right to raise that in the context of this conversation.
I want to speak for a moment about a few of the arguments I hear come from my Conservative colleagues across the way, in particular, in relation to this conversation. Specifically, it is the notion, the insinuation, the argument they make every single day that there is a direct relationship between the increase in the cost of food in Canada and the price on pollution.
We can debunk this in a couple of ways. First, if we look at OECD data from within the last eight months, we can see that Canada is on par with the United States in terms of the cost of food in our country. I have asked this question of my Conservative colleagues before and have yet to get a sufficient answer: How is it that in two jurisdictions, one where there is a price on pollution and another where there is not, the food prices are essentially the same?
In addition to that, I think it is important to draw attention to some very interesting testimony that came out of the Standing Committee on Agriculture earlier today. There was an interesting conversation that took place. We heard from Sylvain Charlebois, one of the leading experts in Canada on this particular issue, as well as Tyler McCann.
It was very interesting. They noted, and I will draw the attention of the chamber to this first, that the climate crisis, the impact that climate change is having on farmers and on the industry, is one of the most, if not the most, significant detriments that we are facing right now.
It should not be free to pollute in this country.
Having said all that, I want to come back to the point I mentioned a moment ago, which I hear often from colleagues in the Conservative Party. This is that there is a direct correlation between the price on pollution and the price of food. They will argue that if one taxes the farmer, then they are going to pass the cost on.
Here is what is interesting: Mr. Charlebois and Mr. McCann said the same thing today, which was that there is no sufficient data, no statistical analysis from the past number of years, in relation to a price on pollution in Canada that can point to its relationship with the increase in food prices.
Mr. Charlebois mentioned it. Mr. McCann reiterated it in response to a question I asked. Even my colleague from Regina, interestingly, helped me out a little bit. I had mistakenly said that Mr. Charlebois had said that the price on pollution was not contributing to the increase in food prices; my colleague from Regina mentioned that, no, he did not say that. He just said that there is no proof, that there is no evidence to support it.
I thought that this was quite contradictory, that what my colleague was perhaps unintentionally clarifying for me was, in fact, a rebuke of the primary position we see and hear taken day in and day out by my colleagues across the way. I think it is important that we recognize, as has been discussed by other colleagues at committee, in the media and by other experts in relation to this issue across the country, that these are complex issues. Canada is not immune to the challenges we are facing. It should not be free to pollute in this country.
What we heard at the agriculture committee today, in part two of the report that we are talking about right now, is that there is no evidence that can point to a relationship between the price on pollution and the increase in food prices.
With that, I will conclude my remarks and gladly speak to colleagues' questions during the next part of this conversation.
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- Feb/6/24 7:03:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am certainly enjoying the spirit of the debate. I will try to decrease the volume so that if I repeat something I have said, I do not get accused of saying it louder and louder.
We know that eight out of 10 Canadians are better off because they are getting more money back than it is costing them when they are faced with an increase as a result of the price on pollution.
It is interesting because my colleague sits on the agriculture committee with me, and we have heard from lots of farmers, so he knows very well I have had conversations with farmers. He knows very well that conversations are taking place with farmers at that committee, that conversations take place with farmers whom I meet from my home province of Manitoba or from Saskatchewan and Alberta. They come to say hello and pay me a visit here in my parliamentary office on the Hill, and conversations take place with constituents in ridings where there are farmers.
The member was right to say that I represent an urban riding. I do not think that discredits me from having a voice on this, and I do not think he was suggesting that, so it does make sense that I am not speaking to farmers in my riding. However, I am speaking to people all of the time in relation to my work on the agriculture committee, and I will say that I have learned a lot, genuinely, from my colleagues from all parties, as I begin my career here.
I do want to thank the hon. member. It is very generous for colleagues to say that, because I am new, they are going to cut me some slack. I certainly hope that will be the case for some time to come.
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- Feb/6/24 7:05:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to commend that member for his audition for cabinet because there was not an answer in that comment. He is prepping himself for question period already. I wish him luck with that. He has two years left to make that move.
As a member of the agriculture committee, can he name one farmer he talked to, who has boots on the ground, planting, harvesting, dairy farming or poultry farming, who has come to him and said that carbon tax has helped their operation, that they are doing better, that it is a good thing that the Liberals implemented a carbon tax and that they cannot wait for it to go to $170 a tonne by 2030 to take $1 billion out of their pockets?
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Madam Speaker, although I really appreciate this prairie battle back and forth between colleagues, I also enjoy the opportunity to rise and speak to this very important issue as we go through the agriculture committee's 10th report.
I know everyone will be delighted to hear that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Regina—Lewvan, so members will get to hear more of what he has to say. I hope all members stick around to hear his insights on this topic.
When speaking of food inflation, this is an issue that people face right across the country. The cost of food is up; it is actually at 40-year highs and up 10% year over year. This has been a very sharp, dramatic increase in recent years. People are really noticing it at the grocery store. People are struggling to afford healthy meals for their families.
Moreover, as we look to the future, Canada's Food Price Report is predicting a 5% to 7% increase on the cost of food even further. We are already at 40-year highs. We have already seen a 10% increase year over year, and now the report predicts another 5% to 7% increase in the cost of food. The most substantial of these increases will be for some very regular items, like vegetables, dairy and meat products, that Canadians look to as staples of their diets.
To put this in perspective, an average family of four would spend $16,288 per year on food in Canada. I know that is a sticker shock to a lot of people, but that is the reality people are facing. Unfortunately, we have noticed food bank usage is up.
In my riding, and I have spoken about this on the floor previously, I had a recent interaction with folks in Ignace who run the food bank there. It is a small community in my riding. It is shocking to them how many people are turning to the food bank, people who they never thought would have to turn to a food bank. One thing that was mentioned to me was the most heartbreaking moment in the day is when someone goes to the food bank and realizes there is actually nothing left. The food bank is literally running out of food in Ignace because of how expensive groceries have become for people.
That is not rural community but a small urban community that is isolated in northern Ontario. It is something that we are really unaccustomed to in the region. Of course, it is not just the costs; people are cutting back on their diets. We have heard stories of mothers watering down their kids' milk and cutting back on healthy food just to try to make ends meet. All around, it is a real affordability crisis when we talk about food inflation.
With this report, the committee has brought forward some suggestions. I would like to add a few more and to talk about some of the very real issues we are facing as a country. Food inflation is going up, and that is a direct result of a lot of the Liberal government's actions. An inflationary deficit is one of them. The Prime Minister has added more debt than all previous prime ministers before him combined. There is currently no plan to balance the budget.
What does that mean? It drives up their debt, which drives up inflation, and Canadians pay more on everything at the pump and at the grocery store. That is something we see as a major issue. The federal debt is actually projected to reach $1.2 trillion. That would represent nearly $81,000 per Canadian household. Each household would have to pay $81,000 in order to pay off that debt.
It is clear that we must balance the budget, but the government must bring back some fiscal prudence to ensure that we can balance the budget, lower the deficit and end the inflationary deficit driving up the cost of living for Canadians.
That is one suggestion I would like to put forward and something that our Conservative Party and our leader, the member for Carleton, have been advocating for a number of years now. It is a great suggestion.
Another one that I am sure, Madam Speaker, you will be well aware of, is that we are calling on the government to pass Bill C-234, which would exempt farmers from the carbon tax.
Northwestern Ontario is not the largest agricultural region in the country by any means, but there are a number of local farmers and producers in the area, specifically in Dryden and the Oxdrift area where the Cloverbelt Country producers provide locally grown vegetables and beef products. This is an important issue locally in northwestern Ontario and, really, right across the country as, of course, it is not just the farmers who have to pay it, but everyone who has to pay this tax as it gets passed on to the price of food.
In fact, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has estimated that farmers paid almost $14,000 in carbon tax in the first year it was imposed. The independent Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed that an increase in carbon taxes to $170 a tonne, which the government would sure like to do, would cumulatively cost farmers over $1 billion by 2030. That is a staggering number. Farmers are already struggling and the price of food is already getting out of control. I could not imagine how farmers would be able to operate and how people would be able to afford food with further increases.
To make it worse, the government actually introduced a second carbon tax, the clean fuel regulations, that would cost the average household an extra $573 per year. That is without any rebate. Now, we often hear the government touting its carbon tax rebate but this portion of it, the second carbon tax, comes with absolutely no rebate whatsoever.
Conservatives on the agricultural committee have brought forward some suggestions. I am not a member of that committee, but we have some great members who are representing us well in that regard. The Conservatives on that committee are suggesting that the government remove the carbon tax that is applied to all of the food inputs, not including farm fuels. That is what we want to achieve through Bill C-234. We are also calling on the government to complete a comprehensive study on the economic impact of the carbon tax and clean fuel regulations and how both of those affect the cost of food production, the price of food and the entire food supply chain as a whole.
Above all, we must pass Bill C-234 in its original form. This is a very important bill brought forward by our colleague and something that is going to make a world of difference, not just for farmers, but everyone who has to buy food, which is everyone in Canada, of course. It is such an essential item. With the cost of living spiralling out of control, the very least we can do is to axe this carbon tax on farmers and families. We obviously, as the Conservative Party, are going to axe the tax completely and get rid of it for good but, in the meantime, we are hoping that the governing NDP-Liberal coalition can meet us halfway, realize that people are struggling and work to pass Bill C-234 as quickly as possible.
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- Feb/6/24 7:34:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to engage in this debate. I know that the agriculture committee had very valuable conversations when it heard from a host of witnesses.
I specifically want to ask my friend from Regina—Lewvan about his interactions with farmers and others within the food supply chain. We have endeavoured to explain that rising costs are a feature, not a flaw, of the Liberal-NDP coalition's carbon tax, and the carbon tax affects every stage of the process. Take a loaf of bread. From the farmer who grows the grain, to the trucker who ships it, to the baker who bakes it, to the grocery store that sells it and to the person who buys it, through every step of the process of that slice of bread getting on somebody's plate, the carbon tax is being paid.
I wonder if my friend from Regina could share the conversations he has had with farmers and those at every other stage of the supply chain about the impact that the carbon tax has on what Canadians ultimately pay for the food they buy at the grocery store.
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