- Member of Parliament
- Caucus Chair
- NDP
- Cowichan—Malahat—Langford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,733.69
- Government Page
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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- Dec/1/23 11:28:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this coming Monday, the CEO of Sobeys will be back to testify about food prices.
For two years, the Liberals have been beating around the bush both on bringing food prices down and on standing up to grocery CEOs. Anyone can tell us that the minister's little meeting, where he asked the rich CEOs nicely to stop gouging Canadian grocery shoppers, had no impact.
By bringing back the grocery CEOs, the NDP has given the minister a chance to right his wrongs, so will the Liberals crack down on the out-of-control price gouging?
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- Mar/6/23 2:50:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are really worried about keeping up with the high cost of their groceries, and the prices just keep going up.
While people are stretching their budgets to handle growing costs, rich corporations and grocery chains are making massive profits. Last week, the European Central Bank expressed concerns that CEOs are using the cost of living crisis and inflation to hike their prices, and the Bank of Canada is admitting to having the same fears.
Will the Liberals finally admit that rich CEOs and corporate greed are helping drive up food prices, and will they make them pay what they owe?
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- Feb/13/23 2:44:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are doing everything right, but they are still having to stretch their budgets to keep up with rising food costs. All the while, grocery companies are making billions. The math is not adding up. All parties agreed with the NDP to initiate a greedflation study, but the Liberals have continued to stand by while CEOs are raking in record profits.
People want the government to hold grocery chains accountable for their role in food prices. Why do the Liberals let grocery CEOs off the hook, letting them wriggle out of their responsibilities and refusing to charge a windfall profits tax?
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- Oct/31/22 7:10:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a record number of Canadians are having to resort to food banks right now. This is a shocking statistic for a country as wealthy as Canada. We can juxtapose that with the record profits grocery chains are making. Canadians are seeing the high prices of food, looking at the record profits oil and gas companies are making and juxtaposing that with the high prices Canadians are paying at the pumps.
I am glad to see the Liberals followed our lead and agreed to bring in things such as dental care, the rental benefit and doubling the GST credit. These are things we have been calling for for quite some time, and I am glad to see the Liberals follow our lead on this, but more needs to be done.
More needs to be done, and Canadians need to see their government will no longer let corporations and rich CEOs pad their wallets and use inflation as an excuse for doing so. Therefore, I am looking for a commitment from the parliamentary secretary to see that instituted, followed up on and brought forward in the fall economic statement.
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- Oct/31/22 7:03:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am rising during today's adjournment proceedings to follow up on a question that I asked the government on October 17, a few weeks ago.
That was the same day that the NDP brought forward its successful opposition day motion. Basically, the gist of my question was the fact that, under successive Conservative and Liberal governments, we have seen CEOs and corporations increasing their share of wealth. It is really a question of fairness. My question to the government that day was whether the government would finally admit that it has let corporate greed go unchecked by finally voting with the NDP to defend Canadian families.
In that opposition day motion vote that we had following question period, I am very pleased to report that the motion was passed by the House unanimously. I believe the vote was 327-0, which was amazing because it showed that the Conservatives, the Liberals, the Greens and the Bloc Québécois are following the NDP's lead. They are listening to their constituents and understanding that this is an issue.
To reference that motion, it asked the government to basically force CEOs and big corporations to pay what they owed and to close the loopholes that have allowed them to avoid paying $30 billion in taxes in 2021 alone. It asked the government to launch a fair and affordable food strategy that tackles corporate greed in the grocery sector and to also support the agriculture and agri-food committee, where I also managed to pass an unanimous motion for study into this very issue.
We always see those news items that come out of social media, either on January 1 and January 2 of every year, which show that the average CEO has already made, in the first couple of days, more money than the average Canadian. That is why I really want to centre on this theme of fairness.
Canadians For Tax Fairness found that in 2021, 123 of Canada's largest and most profitable corporations managed to evade even more taxation than they had paid in the three years before COVID-19. That is inclusive of 2017 to 2019. This was done in a variety of ways. There are tax havens they take advantage of. There are deductions for business meals, entertainment and other expenses. Even the executives' pay itself, businesses can claim as an expense.
If we think about what $30 billion would have done, what that lost revenue that the Canadian treasury missed out on could have paid for, we could have protected and expanded even more ecosystems. We could have helped workers and communities adapt to and mitigate climate change. We could have increased the minimum wage for federally regulated industries. We could have paid more on the national debt, reduced our deficit and increased transfer payments to provinces. The list goes on as to what we would have been able to do.
I believe we need to get serious about this. The government has already followed through on some initiatives that have long been NDP demands, but I believe it needs to go further. It needs to start implementing things like a tax on extreme personal wealth. It needs to bring in a windfall profits tax to get at that money that so many corporations have been able to benefit from over the last couple of years and to really tackle those extreme profits.
We believe added resources are needed for the CRA. We need to see those higher taxes so that we can have this fair and level playing field instituted while so many Canadians are struggling to get by right now.
Again, my question to the parliamentary secretary is this: Will she, on behalf of her government, admit that corporate greed has gone unchecked and will she put in policies to address it?
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- Oct/28/22 11:46:41 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, families are being forced to turn to food banks at record rates because they cannot keep up with rising food prices. People are angry that their wages stay the same while rich CEOs are driving up costs to make millions.
The Liberals have a responsibility to support Canadians. Instead, they have let CEOs hide their massive profits behind inflation. When will the Liberals tackle corporate greed in the grocery sector to help families with their food bills?
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- Oct/27/22 2:29:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, families are making difficult choices about what food they can afford and costs are only getting higher. Today, a report from Food Banks Canada proved that people just cannot keep up. At record rates, families are turning to food banks to get the help they need. The Liberals have a responsibility to support Canadians. Instead, they have sided with rich grocery CEOs who are hiding behind inflation to line their pockets.
When will the Liberals hold big grocers accountable for the price gouging Canadian families are experiencing?
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- Oct/17/22 2:30:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while grocery CEOs are making millions of dollars in bonuses, Canadians have been making difficult choices about what groceries they can afford. Today, after pressure from the NDP, Loblaws showed that it is possible to freeze prices, but it needs to be forced to do it.
This afternoon the Conservatives and the Liberals have an opportunity to help people instead of the rich CEOs who are profiting off of struggling Canadians. Will the government admit that it has let corporate greed go unchecked by finally voting with the NDP to defend Canadian families?
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- Oct/6/22 10:22:09 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to compliment my colleague. Indeed, he is a pleasure to work with at committee. We have always had very constructive talks on this.
As for the grocery code of conduct, absolutely, it has come up repeatedly at our committee. What we have heard, especially from producers and processors, is that when they are trying to market their items in large grocery chains there are all of these hidden fees. They can get charged for not supplying enough product, supplying too much or late delivery. That is why this grocery code of conduct is being put in place. It is because of the business practices of large grocery chains, which have put an unfair advantage on our producers and processors.
Again, it is part of the trend of why we are here today to tackle this issue and meet it with effective policy.
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- Oct/6/22 10:20:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am so glad to see Conservatives, yet again, going to bat for their corporate friends. If the member thinks this is an NDP policy, he should look across the Atlantic Ocean to Conservatives in the United Kingdom who are proposing the exact same policy and have implemented what we are pursuing.
It is actually time for Conservatives to wake up, listen to their constituents, stop moaning about taxes and going after CPP and EI, and join us in going after the corporate fat cats who are profiting from an economy that so many Canadians are suffering under.
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- Oct/6/22 10:19:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Kings—Hants and all colleagues on the agriculture committee for supporting my motion yesterday. It is going to be a very important inquiry to get the answers Canadians deserve.
I am trying to approach this issue from the perspective of one of my constituents. Two things are true. Prices on food items that people need to survive are going up faster than the general rate of inflation. That is the first truth. The second truth is that the large corporations that have cornered the grocery market are making profits. These two things exist at the same time, and it is about time that parliamentarians took this issue seriously, started an inquiry, got answers and met the challenge with effective policy that is going to tackle inequality in this country.
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- Oct/6/22 10:08:08 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that,
(i) big grocery stores have made massive profits in the past year, not long after several were investigated for bread price-fixing,
(ii) workers’ wages and the prices paid to producers in the agricultural sector are not keeping up with those corporate profits, or with inflation,
(iii) Canadian families are struggling with the rising costs of essential purchases,
the House call on the government to recognize that corporate greed is a significant driver of inflation, and to take further action to support families during this cost-of-living crisis, including:
(a) forcing CEOs and big corporations to pay what they owe, by closing the loopholes that have allowed them to avoid $30 billion in taxes in 2021 alone, resulting in a corporate tax rate that is effectively lower now than when this government was elected;
(b) launching an affordable and fair food strategy which tackles corporate greed in the grocery sector including by asking the Competition Bureau to launch an investigation of grocery chain profits, increasing penalties for price-fixing and strengthening competition laws to prohibit companies from abusing their dominant positions in a market to exploit purchasers or agricultural producers; and
(c) supporting the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food in investigating high food prices and the role of “greedflation”, including inviting grocery CEOs before the committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I wish to notify the House that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
Today is a good day in the House of Commons because we as New Democrats are forcing parliamentarians to deal with the issues that are concerning Canadians. The motion that we as a party are bringing forward for debate today is specifically calling out the massive corporate profits that are occurring in so many sectors, often at the expense of what ordinary Canadians are able to afford.
Canadians see this week in and week out. They see it when they fill up their vehicles with fuel and they see it when they are at the grocery stores. It is reaching a breaking point for many families. It is forcing too many families to make difficult decisions that no family in a country as wealthy as Canada should have to make. These are decisions on whether their family budgets can afford to pay the rent or mortgage, decisions on whether we can get as much fresh produce for our young children as we used to get and decisions on whether we should only fill up the car with half a tank this week because we need to save money for next week.
This is the reality for too many families, and not only in my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, but across British Columbia and across Canada, from coast to coast to coast. For far too long, these Canadians have been looking at the profits that have been made, especially over this year. Some oil and gas companies are making over 100% more compared with what they were making just a few years ago. I hear a lot of talk in this place about taxes, but not enough talk is happening about the revenue we are losing, the revenue that would be there to support Canadians who are in dire need of it.
It is important that Canadians see that their members of Parliament are addressing their concerns. It is important that they see the people they have sent to this place debating this issue with sincerity and making policies that are going to address it. That is why I am such a proud member of the New Democratic caucus. We have been the only party in this place to call out massive corporate profits and champion an excess profits tax. We will continue to champion that until policy-makers see the light in this place and respond with effective policy.
I want to segue to the remarkable success that Canadians enjoyed yesterday at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I want to thank my colleagues from that committee who agreed to my motion to study the excess profits in the grocery sector in particular.
I want to centre particularly on food because food is the great equalizer in our society. No one can live without food. Everybody needs to eat, but some in our society are able to eat without worry. Others have to make difficult choices. When it comes to our nation's children, we know that a healthy and balanced diet is incredibly important not only for their growth, but for their ability to achieve a good education. In a country as wealthy as Canada, far too many children are suffering.
Juxtapose that reality with the fact that the three largest grocery chains in Canada have been raking in the money. We can look at Empire's net profits, which are up by 27.8% in two years. Loblaws profits are up by 17.2% compared with those of last year, and Metro's are up by 7.8%. I know that the CEO of Sobeys has recently been in the news complaining about us taking up an examination of their profits and shining a spotlight on this issue, but if I am in the bad books of a corporate CEO, I think I am doing my job properly in this place.
Those profits are publicly available, but I also want to identify the fact that calls are coming from inside the house. Last week, my office received an email from an employee. I am going to keep him anonymous. I am not going to mention who he works for, because he is afraid of reprisals, but I will quote him. He said:
I have noticed a worrying trend over the last year of large quantities of retail price increases being sent down on a weekly basis.... However, cost increases on these items don't match the increases of retail prices that are sent down....
I have noticed a trend where retail prices consumers must pay for products will increase, and cost increases will come down months after the fact, if at all. Based on what I know of our systems at [the] store level this means that the profit margins on saleable goods will increase for the company until a related cost increase brings it back down. Thus prices consumers must pay are overinflated until costs align with the retail change....
...That is why I believe that a federal probe into grocery store price increases should be supported in our parliament.
I would say to that employee that the New Democrats have heard their call. We are taking action and we are leading the initiative in this Parliament, not only at committee but in the House of Commons, to address this person's concerns and the concerns Canadian consumers have.
We are not going to stop there. We are also going to go after oil and gas. It is one thing to talk about the carbon price, a price on pollution, but if the government is going to completely ignore the massive profits that oil and gas companies are making off the backs of working Canadians, I think it needs to do some reflection on where its policies stand.
We are at a point where the CEO of Shell is being more progressive than the Liberals and calling out something the Conservatives will not even touch. I do not know what kind of a topsy-turvy world we live in when we have to depend on a CEO to be more progressive than our own government, but it is shameful.
In British Columbia, my constituents know the price of gas. They see it all the time, but they can also match that up with what large oil and gas companies are raking in right now. We need to follow the lead of other countries like the U.K. We need to implement an excess profits tax. That natural resource is owned by Canadians. Private companies have the privilege of bringing it out of the ground and selling it back to us, but it is a resource that is owned by Canadians. It is high time we put in place policies to make sure we are getting the full value out of it.
We also heard earlier this week that last year alone we did not collect $30 billion in corporate taxes. That is the difference between what corporations actually paid and what they should have paid. We are having this talk about the structural deficits we see in our housing and the structural deficits in supports for Canadians who are going through hard times, and then we look at what $30 billion in one year alone could have paid for: How many doctors could we have hired? How many school food programs could we have implemented? How many workers could we have retrained with that money to prepare them for the 21st-century economy?
That is the fundamental question before us. It is a question of what we want to be as a country. Do we really want to pursue well-funded programs that help lift everybody up, not just those at the top? I know where I stand on this matter, and I hope colleagues and other parties will do some genuine reflection on where they stand as well.
We are in a place where there has been extreme inaction from both the Liberals and Conservatives. If we were to follow Conservative tax policy, the Margaret Thatcher cosplay they are so often engaging in, we need only look to the United Kingdom as to what Conservative policy would result in. The Conservative prime minister there has single-handedly caused the U.K. economy to go into an absolute economic free fall through tax policies that rightly belong in the 1980s and have no place in the 21st-century economy, especially when we are trying to address massive inequality.
I know I am in my last minute of this speech, but I want to assure my constituents in Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and people in British Columbia and people right across this great country that, for as long as I have the privilege of standing in this place, I will never let them down. I will continue to aggressively pursue these progressive policies. I will do that until we actually see the fundamental change we need to see.
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