44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 21, 2024 10:00AM
- May/21/24 10:17:11 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is very concerned about the price of groceries. It is one of the reasons we called the grocery giants to the table to demand better from them. It is why we brought in legislation to make changes to the Competition Act; this is something the NDP supported, which I appreciate.
The member referred to providing food for children. Just this last week, the Prime Minister was in The Maples, announcing and amplifying that particular program. Children cannot learn or participate on an empty stomach. I would suggest to the member that the government is very much aware of the situation and is taking action where it can. Could he be a bit more precise about what, specifically, he would like to see take place outside the one tax he is talking about that we need to put in?
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- May/21/24 11:18:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is precisely right. That is why it is just so baffling. The Liberals should go outside and talk to someone, actually talk to the people.
This is not rocket science. They should go to the grocery stores and the food banks to see these working families that cannot afford to pay for groceries, which have skyrocketed under the leadership of the Prime Minister, propped up by the NDP leader.
That is what it is all about, power and control, and driving up the cost to make Canadians dependent upon them.
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- May/21/24 11:30:20 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member talked about the leader of the NDP and his brother who is with Metro. We always wonder why we do not hear about Metro in here. We hear about Loblaws all the time. However, the government is equally as complicit in grocery prices.
Last October, the minister of innovation stated that grocery prices would come down in a matter of weeks or months. The government passed and received royal assent, on December 15, 2023, on the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act. The government has an act called “affordable groceries”, which was passed on December 15.
I wonder if the member would comment on this. Have grocery prices gone down? Has the government done anything at all to lower grocery prices?
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- May/21/24 11:31:09 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, unfortunately, the answer to that is no.
Often when I am talking to constituents, they will tell me they cannot believe how much one bag of groceries costs. They will go to grab a couple things for dinner or grab a couple things for the weekend, and have one bag. That one bag used to be $20. Now it is $50, $75 or even $100 just to fill one bag of groceries. It is incredible and there is a way to fix it right away. We can eliminate a third of inflation today by getting rid of the carbon tax.
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- May/21/24 2:55:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, over the past three years, the price of groceries has gone up by 21%. No wonder food banks are swamped. The Liberals and Conservatives could not care less, however.
When the CEO of Metro is a Conservative donor, it is clear who the official opposition leader is working for. Meanwhile, the Liberals are giving Loblaw and Costco millions of dollars in handouts. While ordinary folks are going hungry, CEOs are getting the VIP treatment. Enough is enough.
Will the Liberals support the NDP motion to make wealthy CEOs pay their fair share?
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- May/21/24 6:40:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, two weeks ago, I was on a Mission friends and neighbours Facebook site in the community of Mission, with about 25,000 community members. There was a mother on there who asked if it was just her who could not get by with $350 a week for groceries any more.
All we have to do to see the impacts of inflation is to look at the cost of food, specifically beef, and fresh fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately, due to the policies of the reckless government, fresh fruit and vegetables have become out of reach, even for the middle class.
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- May/21/24 11:04:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know that Conservatives were wrong when they predicted inflation would go up as a result of the supports we were investing in for Canadians, and we know that they were also wrong when they tried to suggest that inflation was created by the current government, because inflation is something that is being seen throughout the world. It is something that was being seen in the United Kingdom, which had a much higher inflation rate than we do. It is something seen in the United States, which continues to have higher inflation than we do.
As a matter of fact, I got a real kick earlier, when we were debating the budget bill, out of how a member from the Conservatives got up and tried to make a witty joke by saying he does not know what Kraft Dinner has to do with Ukraine, as though he was trying to somehow suggest that there is no connection between the two. The rich irony is that there is something fundamentally connecting Kraft Dinner and Ukraine, which is the resources and the supplies.
The CEO of Kraft himself said that the supply constraints and probably wheat coming out of Ukraine were impacting the ability to keep food prices low, so I just find it absolutely remarkable that Conservatives believe what they are saying. I believe that they have convinced themselves to believe what they are saying, but the reality is that it is just not true. They were wrong when they suggested that investing in Canadians was going to lead to inflation, and they are wrong when they continue to try to make the point that inflation is something unique to Canada, but I think that the vast majority of Canadians understand this. I think that they understand what Conservatives are doing, how they are trying to utilize those specific anxieties against them and weaponize them.
We look at exactly what the measures are that Conservatives were objecting to, and they are the exact measures in the fall economic statement that Conservatives said would lead to inflation. It is things like strengthening the Competition Act to ensure that the Competition Bureau is empowered to hold grocers accountable and prioritize consumer interests. Just so Canadians understand, this is really important because in the United States, the largest grocery retailer owns or controls 11% of grocery sales, and that is Walmart. Do members know which is the largest one and what its percentage is in Canada?
An hon. member: Loblaw.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: That is right, Madam Speaker; it is Loblaw. Does my colleague know what the percentage is? He does not. It is 42%, so 42% of groceries in this country are controlled by Loblaw and their retail. With Loblaw and a couple of the other large grocery retailers, very quickly I see how we have created an oligopoly here. There is an oligopoly operating in our country when it comes to grocery sales.
It becomes very important to identify what is going on here and to put measures in place to ensure that they are properly dealt with, and that is exactly what we are doing. It is what Conservatives are against. They are very loud and have a lot to say when it comes to government spending, but they are absolutely silent when it comes to the profits that are being made by Loblaw, probably because the Leader of the Opposition's own chief campaign manager, Jenni Byrne, is an actual lobbyist for Loblaw.
The campaign manager of the very individual who is standing up trying to fight against lobbyists and saying lobbyists are useless is a lobbyist for Loblaw. She has a vested interest in ensuring that Loblaw keeps its prices high, so how can anybody actually listen to what the Leader of the Opposition, the member from Carleton, says, and actually think that he is being genuine in any regard when he suggests that he understands the impacts of the greedy corporations we are seeing, in particular the retail grocery giants and Loblaw, which I mentioned specifically?
A few of the other initiatives that are in this particular piece of legislation, the fall economic statement, include unlocking $20 billion in new financing to build 30,000 more apartments per year. Conservatives love to get up and talk about how no apartments have been built, apparently. However, I can tell members that, in my riding alone, we are now on the 13th affordable housing project that has been built in Kingston, in which the federal government has, in one way or another, been a partner.
I get a real kick out of it when I hear Conservatives go on and on about it. Meanwhile, when the Leader of the Opposition was the housing minister, he built a total of six units, not buildings, not duplexes, but six units. The number seemed so wildly low to me that I thought it was impossible, that somebody was doing something with the numbers, that there was no way that this could be real, until I realized that this information actually came forward from an Order Paper question that was tabled. That information is tabled and available for everybody to see: In the one year when the member for Carleton was the minister responsible for housing, he built a total of six units. Those six units happen to be in Quebec, if one goes and looks at the numbers. However, he built a total of six units throughout the entire country.
Another thing we have done, through the fall economic statement, is to launch the new tax-free first home savings account. This has helped over half a million Canadians start saving for their first home. We have supported seniors through the Canada pension plan, the guaranteed income supplement and old age security, all of which are indexed to inflation.
Canadians are not going to forget very easily how the Leader of the Opposition, when he was in government previously, raised old age security, the OAS, to 67 years old. If there is anybody out there who is in their early 60s and planning for their retirement, they should seriously give some thought to whom they want to elect as their next government and whether it is a former member of a government that has a track record of actually increasing old age security requirements from 65 years old to 67. In all likelihood, it is going to happen again.
Earlier tonight, when we heard Conservatives talking about how they “balanced” the budget in 2015, I guess that, from an accounting perspective, they did. However, let us look at what they did to get there. They increased old age security to 67. They closed veterans' offices, doing this all on the backs of veterans. They did a number of initiatives to “balance” the budget. They did it in that one year in 2015, if one actually accepts the fact that one would consider that a balanced budget.
People have to understand that, when Conservatives talk about balancing the budget, they are really talking about cuts. Out of every Conservative budget that was introduced between 1990 and present day, only two of them ran surpluses. There is that made-up surplus I just talked about from 2015. There was also another one that Stephen Harper had at the beginning of his term as prime minister, and that was because it was coming off the heels of Paul Martin's surplus that he had. This is factual. Those are the only two budgets that ran surpluses. The reason governments will run deficits is that, as long as one's economy is growing at a faster pace than one is taking on that debt, one is still in a very healthy position. It is why we continue to get AAA credit rating reports from independent third parties for the manner in which the government is spending and taxing.
It is why we continue to see, year over year, more investments made in Canadians. It really just comes down to whether one thinks that there is a role for government to play in ensuring that people have equal opportunities.
That is exactly what we see as a government, which is that at least people have to have a shot at being able to strive and get what they want and hope to get out of their career and their life.
There are a number of other issues in here. The other one I wanted to touch on was $10-a-day child care, which was another issue that was updated in the fall economic statement. This was a very important piece of legislation that brought in an opportunity to empower more people to get out into the workforce. We have already seen it. We did not have to go far in order to study it. All we had to do was look at what was happening in Quebec and how more people, more spouses and, in particular, more women were in the workforce as a result of $10-a-day child care. This is another advancement our government is continuing to push forward in the spirit of fairness, equality and opportunity for everybody.
I look forward to the question from the member for Saskatoon—University at this point. I am sure it will be great.
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- May/21/24 11:27:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, while we are discussing what we renamed the SES, the summer economic statement, Canadians are experiencing the worst cost of living crisis in 40 years, due to a lack of affordable housing, the carbon tax, and record-smashing food bank use and grocery prices. Canadians have always had common sense. When Canadians look at their own expenses, they budget. They stretch dollars. They choose whether they go on vacation or whether the kids go to after-school activities. They go to a grocery store and have to budget what they are buying. They have to look at practical solutions to everyday challenges with resilience and resourcefulness.
However, common sense is like deodorant; the ones who need it the most never use it. With respect to this level of government, Canadians are shaking their heads in disbelief because of the lack of common sense on the opposite side of the aisle. This is the greatest country in the world. We have great people, innovative minds, great institutions and hard workers. We have resilience. Canadians invented peanut butter, the zipper, the Ski-Doo and the Sea-Doo, but common-sense approaches have become rare commodities.
In 2015, among the Liberal campaign promises was the promise to help the middle class and those looking to join it, as well as tax cuts for the middle class. What do we see now? We see more people who are out of the middle class. We see tax increases. The carbon tax alone went up 23% on April 1. More people are finding themselves out of the middle class, and more people are finding themselves taxed, as we have a government that lacks common sense.
Look at what the government could do if it looked at the basics. Let us say a dozen people went into the woods to try to start a community. What would be the first things they would do? They would build shelter. They would hunt and find food. The community would make sure it had a place to look after the children and one another, that everyone would be well looked after.
After nine years under the government, more Canadians than ever before are finding that rent has doubled, mortgage payments have doubled and the amount needed for a down payment has doubled. They are finding that grocery prices are $700 more this year alone. Groceries have gone up 24% over the last four years. Look at the cost of heating one's home. All prices for farmers growing their crops have gone up. The government's common sense has just disappeared. Let us look at some examples of its lack of common sense.
The government borrowed $400 billion back in the day when the Prime Minister said that interest rates were at historic lows. When we borrowed $400 billion, the government borrowed it over the short term. The government did not look ahead 20 or 25 years as a family would when looking at a mortgage. The government looked at the short term.
Now the debt is coming up for renewal. Do members know how much the renewal is going to cost us just in 2025? It is going to cost $12 billion, because the government did not have the common sense to look at long-term loans to look after Canadians' money. I wonder how many water bombers we could have bought and had fully crewed to be operating in B.C. right now to look after forest fighters.
Look at NATO and NORAD. They are our trusted allies. NATO and NORAD have asked us for years to contribute our 2%. We even passed a resolution in the House to do so, but we have not contributed. Because of that, we do not have a seat at the table. What happens to international security if we are not at the table? We will also not be at the table when it comes to international trade because our trading partners will work only with partners who work with them for security.
What is happening up north right now? The fact is that we do not have a base. We cannot even land an F-35 fighter in the north right now in Canada? We have jets being purchased, but it has taken 10 years. Remember when we said that the F-35 was too much? The Prime Minister said we were not going to buy it, and nine years later, of course, we are buying it for how many billions more? However, we cannot even land the thing in the north. Finland is buying half as many F-35s as we are, and it has already built a runway to land in the north to defend the northern border.
We talk about icebreakers in the north. We have one barely functioning icebreaker. Do members know how many icebreakers Russia has in the north right now? It has sixteen. Do members know how many China has? It has forty. We did not have the common sense to put any money toward our security or the north, which we really need in order to play our part in NORAD and NATO, on behalf of our allies in the U.S. and, of course, just for our security.
We have talked about drugs in hospitals. We are saying that smoking crack at a hospital or bringing in a weapon should be outlawed. More importantly, I visited Millhaven maximum security prison in Kingston only two weeks ago; three inmates there were high on drugs.
After nine years, we have mergers and more mergers under the government. We talk about competition. Part of the bill is about competition. However, under the government's watch, the merger of HSBC and RBC was approved. Because of that, mortgage rates have gone up. HSBC used to have a mortgage rate that was 1% lower than RBC's offering. Right now, that is costing the average taxpayer, who has a $500,000 mortgage, $300 more a month because that merger was approved.
We had WestJet buy Sunwing. Only a couple of months later, it was announced that Sunwing was going to shut down. There is only one competitor in the west. Sometimes it is Air Canada; most of the time it is WestJet. We had Rogers buy Shaw. What happened two months ago? It was announced that cellphone prices were to go up nine dollars a month. When we look for competition, it is not there.
The bill would bring in some aspects of competition. Thanks to the Competition Bureau, and dare I say, some amendments by the NDP, we are going to look at ensuring that we have no mergers approved that have a market share of over 30%. At the end of the day, the government has approved more mergers.
Open banking is probably the closest thing we can have to actual competition coming to one of our oligopolies right now. Open banking in Canada would open up the doors for Canadians to bring them financial freedom. One example is this: If Canadians have a Wealthsimple account, they have to screen scrape and find different ways to get through it. The government makes it really difficult for people to try to use a new banking app. This app right now pays Canadians 5% on their cash balance daily. What is the average bank interest rate right now? It is 0.2%. I think if someone had $10,000, over 10 years, they could make $100. Competition is freedom for Canadians. Open banking was not in the fall economic statement or in the new budget, to make that a reality for Canadians.
We are talking about no common sense. The government has hired 100,000 employees, a 40% increase since 2015. However, it takes 58 days to get an email back from CRA, compared with 43 days in 2015. Someone should try getting a passport. There has been no efficiency. There is more government and less efficiency.
On housing, the $4.4-billion housing accelerator has not built one home. We have a lack of skilled trades. Here is my favourite stat from last year, as we are talking about no common sense. We brought 1.3 million immigrants to Canada, new Canadians, permanent residents and TR. Do members know many home builders we brought last year? It was 4,300, and we wonder why we have a housing shortage.
We need immigration. Our birth rates are extremely low. We need people to come in, but when we are looking at immigration, let us make sure we are also looking at building homes first, so we have a place for people to go and house prices do not go sky-high. We even had the member for Winnipeg North say that MAID has saved lives. That was a statement used. There is no common sense.
Another one of my favourite examples is that the government has cut the budget to the Information Commissioner at a time when access to information is at an all-time low. The Ethics Commissioner had their salary cut when the workload has never been higher. Common sense is not common. Canadians have common sense, but the government does not.
It will only be in electing a common-sense Conservative government that we once again restore common sense to Canada and to Canadians. Of course, we will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. We are also going to create competition for a change, for my home, for everyone's home, for our home. Let us bring common sense home.
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