44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 4, 2024 10:00AM
- Jun/4/24 12:38:43 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak on behalf of my constituents in Milton today on the very important issue of grocery prices and all of the affordability challenges that Canadians are facing these days.
I would like to start by stating that I will be splitting my time with the member for Surrey—Newton.
I am happy to respond to some comments made earlier by the hon. Mr. Singh regarding the actions that our government is taking to address food affordability challenges and ensure that all Canadians have access to food and other daily essential goods—
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Mr. Speaker, I apologize; that was completely unintentional. If you will indulge me, I will start from the top and eliminate the name.
I want to thank the page for the podium here and say that I am very grateful for the opportunity to respond to comments made earlier by the leader of the New Democratic Party regarding the actions that our government is taking to address the very real food affordability challenges that Canadians are experiencing. That includes my neighbours, friends and family in Milton, Ontario.
We have an obligation to ensure that all Canadians have access to food and other daily essential goods. I said yesterday in the House of Commons that it is not as though Canadians can simply buy less food. Food is an essential item and needs to be affordable in our country.
Our government has been actively engaged and committed to improving affordability across the board with the view to alleviating the financial stress that is placed on Canadians. While we are doing that, we are addressing the growing costs of essential goods, including groceries. That requires a very strong consumer advocacy sector as well as timely and independent research on consumer issues. That is why our government is targeting enhanced support for Canadian consumers through additional investments in consumer advocacy work.
Yesterday I was talking about the value and the potential for more ombudspeople in the grocery sector to do research and conduct a bit of introspection with respect to why grocery prices are so high these days. Everybody seems to have a theory or some kind of an idea as to why grocery prices are inflated, but there are different reasons, and very complex reasons actually, because everything we shop for at the grocery store comes from somewhere else these days.
We announced in October 2023 that our government would be tripling our investment in Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada's contributions program for non-profit consumer and voluntary organizations. That program's funding was increased to $5 million annually. The additional funds are allowing organizations which advocate directly for the rights of consumers to examine existing and emerging business practices that can be harmful to Canadians, while also recommending actions to improve affordability, increase grocery competition and build on existing government efforts to promote and protect the interests of Canadian consumers.
It is absolutely and abundantly clear that grocery chains in Canada have taken advantage of consumers at various times. The very fact that we have an uncompetitive, consumerist and capitalistic approach to selling food, an essential item in this country, raises eyebrows. As somebody who grew up in non-profit housing, I have to wonder whether there is not more space for non-profit groceries. That is not to suggest that we would not support the workers in those stores, and we would certainly continue to support agriculture workers, farmers and food producers. However, there is a lot of value in removing profit from the essentials.
As a co-op kid, I never hesitate to talk about the value of non-profits. There is one non-profit organization in my riding about whose incredible work I would like to speak: Food for Life, a local charity and organization, a community-serving group that rescues food. In fact, it purchased a couple of refrigerated trucks with support from the federal government. That means that people from the organization can arrive at a grocery store they have contracts with, and before food comes off the shelf and goes into the landfill, the Food for Life experts go in and remove food from the shelves.
Food for Life is supporting the affordability for Canadians on two levels. One, the disposal of food costs grocery stores a lot of money, so they can actually eliminate that cost, which would be passed on to the consumers who shop at the store. Also, the organization is removing high-quality food that will not be sold for one reason or another. I have a lot of feelings about best-before dates. My partner and I often argue about what food has gone bad. I am the type of person who cuts a bit of mould off cheese, grates up the cheese and puts it on my pasta. It does not bother me too much. Perhaps my partner feels a bit differently about cheese mould.
Food for Life and the experts there do an amazing job rescuing food, putting it on shelves, packaging it, storing it and freezing it, and they actually have two free grocery stores. It always raises eyebrows when I tell people that my riding, my region, has two free grocery stores. Anybody back home listening can google “Food for Life in Halton”. People can drop by one of their grocery stores. They have excellent variety: fruit, vegetables, meat, bread and all the essentials.
All that the experts at Food for Life ask for is just a tiny bit of information, nothing terribly intrusive, just so they can continue to serve our community better. I am proud to say that I am a monthly donor to Food for Life. Anybody who is interested can examine the pathway of food waste and how we can redirect food waste toward people who really need it. I just want to stress that the invaluable, incredible work of Food for Life Canada in Halton is doing just that.
Let us go back to some of the projects that our government is funding to further explore barriers to grocery competition in the Canadian context. We have assisted in funding some studies that were completed by the Competition Bureau. It reported that existing barriers in the Canadian grocery sector context include “restrictive covenants” and “property controls”, and retail contracts that limit our control on how real estate is used by competing players in the grocery industry.
Our government is committed to reiterating our commitments to enhancing affordability for Canadians, as demonstrated by our investment through budget 2024. We understand the cost pressures that Canadian families are facing, and they often start with the price of food. That is why budget 2024 launched a national school food program in Canada, the first of its kind, and it will help ensure that more than 400,000 children have access to healthy meals and snacks, so they can remain focused on learning and growing while in class.
I have visited a lot of amazing school food programs. They basically do boxes where they take snacks out of packaging and create little hampers that go to the classrooms. That is to ensure there is a healthy snack available to any kid who might be a little hungry.
There are a lot of reasons a student might be a little hungry, or having a snack attack. It might be because they forgot their lunch at home. It might be because their banana got squished in their bag and they did not want to eat it. It could be because of time poverty; some families just run out of time. Sometimes we forget our lunch. Sometimes it is an affordability challenge and sometimes it is a time poverty issue. Sometimes it is a convenience issue. However, none of those reasons should get in the way of making sure a young kid or student has access to a healthy snack.
I want to give Halton Food for Thought a shout-out and Food4Kids Halton, as they are amazing organizations. The volunteers, the teachers and the parents who show up, and everybody who purchases food for or donates food to these programs, are all saints and I just want to say I appreciate them.
A national school food program will nationalize that and ensure that it does not always just rely on goodwill, donations and volunteers. We are going to ensure that all schools have access to it. It is definitely the case that schools in higher-income neighbourhoods tend to have more volunteers, and they often have more services. We do not want schools in lower, more modest-income neighbourhoods or communities to not have access to these essential programs.
I am really glad that our government is taking the extraordinary step of starting a national school food program. I think 400,000 kids is a lot of kids, and that is a great program and a great way to ensure that young people and students are not going hungry while they are in class.
Our government also believes that a lack of competition in Canada's grocery sector means that Canadians will ultimately pay higher prices to feed themselves and their families. We have actually seen that. It was not that long ago that Loblaw Companies sent out, in Ontario at least, those little $25 gift cards to anybody who went online and signed up. That was sort of its sorry for fixing the price of bread for over a decade. There was a big lawsuit and Loblaw basically said, “Sorry, we were fixing the price of bread. We will make amends by sending everybody 25 bucks.”
As sort of an act of protest, I spent my $25 at Loblaws. I remember doing that, but I think that did not really make up for the fact that it was working against customers. Where we shop is democratic: With our dollars, we want to support companies that have the best interests of their consumers in mind. I believe in customer service and I also believe that companies have a duty to respect their customers. It would be great to see more of that.
Let us go back to some of the significant efforts the Liberals have deployed to ensure that Canada's competition laws are fit for the modern economy. We have also brought forward important amendments to the Competition Act through Bill C-56, and that is the affordable housing and groceries act. These amendments would give further enforcement powers to the Competition Bureau to prevent anti-competitive mergers and to address competition-stifling practices in large dominant players.
It is clear when there is not enough competition in a market. If there is only one store in a community, then it can basically charge whatever it wants. Even when there is more than one store, we can see some of the unfair corporate practices that target more vulnerable communities. Oftentimes, there is a smaller store, like a Shoppers Drug Mart or a convenience store, that is within walking distance to affordable housing. However, with some of the bigger stores, the more discount grocery stores, people require a vehicle to get to them.
In some of those smaller stores, we will see a higher price for the exact same item. I have seen it myself. A can of tomato soup is $2.49 at Shoppers Drug Mart, but if one goes to a No Frills, and it is on for $1.29. Both stores happen to be owned by the same company, so that is an unfair practice. I am not going to be convinced that the shelf cost of an item in one store versus another is actually double.
Finally, our government has made it a priority to maintain something called the food price data hub to give Canadians up-to-date and detailed information on food prices to help them make informed decisions about their grocery options. I am happy to elaborate on the food price data hub in a question.
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- Jun/4/24 12:51:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I support any and all measures to ensure affordability for Canadians, but I also want thoughtful debate in this House about how we should do it. Just saying the federal government should force a company to do something does not indicate how we might get there. We have heard the New Democratic Party say we should force a company to do this, force a company to do that a lot, but there are not a lot of tangible suggestions in terms of what types of incentives, disincentives or methods that our government could possibly use to force a company to do one thing or another.
We need to find sustainable, durable solutions, not a one-time tax. That is not a policy change, that is just retribution and punishment. I am frustrated, too. Food costs too much in Canada, but I want a solution that is going to feed into the future and make sure we always have affordable food in Canada. I brought forward ideas like non-profits, food rescue programs, more data and more research. These are all durable solutions to the food insecurity crisis that Canadians are experiencing. These one-time tax ideas of enforcing this and enforcing that are not really great policy.
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- Jun/4/24 12:53:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, once again, we are seeing an attempt by the Conservatives to conflate the affordability crisis with climate action and targets that we are using to lower emissions in Canada.
The carbon emissions that are the responsibility of various sectors across the board have all been on the way down, whether it is in the transport sector, the agriculture sector, the grocery sector or the health care sector. These are all large emissions-producing industries, as is the steel industry in my riding. Yes, we invested in the steel industry to ensure that we get coal out of the mix with respect to how we produce steel in this country.
We need to build Canada, we need to help the world build up, and that is going to require Canadian ingenuity and innovation.
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- Jun/4/24 12:54:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I find it difficult to answer the question when my colleague opposite will not let me finish.
The truth is we have to invest in Canada to make it cleaner and greener and assist some of the big sectors with those innovations. In the case of Dofasco in Hamilton, when I went to McMaster, I saw the billowing smoke from those coal-fired stacks. In a couple of years, they will be a thing of the past because of our government's investments and interventions. Some of that innovation we should celebrate, not fight over.
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- Jun/4/24 3:02:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer does important and essential work, and we thank him for the update. Recently, he had an update on his website, saying that the last estimate he had done was based on faulty information, and we thank him for correcting the record. It confirms what we have known all along, what economists and independent organizations across the country have been saying, which is that eight out of 10 Canadians are better off with federal carbon pricing.
The reason the Conservatives are so bent out of shape about this is because it re-emphasizes the fact that carbon pricing both lowers emissions and the Canada carbon rebate supports affordability.
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- Jun/4/24 3:04:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have clung to this flawed scenario and they refuse to correct their own misinformation on this very important subject.
I would recommend that the Leader of the Opposition maybe go to Carleton over the summer and brush up on his mathematics. However, it is very clear that it is probably elementary school he needs to go back to. We are talking about adding and subtracting. Conservative math just is not adding up these days. However, I want to reassure Canadians that on July 15, the Canada carbon rebate will be arriving in their bank accounts or in their mailboxes.
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