44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 4, 2024 10:00AM
- Jun/4/24 10:40:32 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, in keeping with today's theme, I would like to focus my remarks on our efforts to tackle food insecurity to ensure real and lasting change. The solutions for food security rests on a strong policy. That is why, from day one, we committed to a food policy for Canada, the first for our nation.
The food policy for Canada launched in 2019 after lengthy and inclusive consultations, which brought everyone to the table to talk about different aspects of the food system and to address challenges. As well as our stakeholder clients, farmers and the value chain, we reached out to Canadians from across Canada's food systems, including consumers, health and nutrition experts, food security advocates, environmental groups, fishers, indigenous peoples and the academic community.
After consultations with over 45,000 Canadians, we arrived at a collective vision for the food policy. That vision is that all people of Canada are able to access a sufficient amount of safe, nutritious and culturally diverse foods and that Canada's food system is resilient and innovative, sustains our environment and supports our economy.
Today, five years later, the Government of Canada continues to work with community-based organizations to strengthen Canada's food system, from sustainable food production and processing to strong local food infrastructure and lowering food waste. This includes our local food infrastructure fund that supports local and regional food systems sustainably. By encouraging the development of small-scale community-based food systems and the building of local processing capacity, including regional slaughter capacity, those requirements to support those producers are critical.
Over the past four years, the fund has supported over 1,000 food security projects across Canada to help food security organizations to reach more families that are struggling with high food prices. Projects include community gardens and kitchens, refrigerated trucks, storage units for donated food and greenhouses in remote and northern communities that face severe food security challenges.
Now, more than ever, we must support the work of organizations that help those who need it most. That is why earlier this year, the hon. Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food announced a federal investment of up to nearly $10 million for over 190 projects under the local food infrastructure fund. The most recent phase is to provide rapid response funding to help improve food security in communities through investments in equipment and infrastructure needs. Projects are targeted and immediate.
This funding will help communities, food banks and organizations across Canada invest in things like new equipment and infrastructure to get food where it is needed most. For example, this funding is helping a first nations community in Alberta with technology to grow fresh vegetables indoors. A food bank in Quebec will be able to invest in cold storage so that it can provide more food to families year-round.
Budget 2024 proposes to provide $62.9 million over three years to renew and expand the local food infrastructure fund to support community organizations across Canada to invest in local food infrastructure, with priority to be given to indigenous and Black communities, along with other equity-deserving groups. Part of the expansion will support organizations to improve infrastructure for school food programs as a complement to the national school food program.
Canada is fortunate to have the very best farmers who work tirelessly to grow and deliver high-quality, nutritious food every day. Sadly, far too many children still go to school on an empty stomach. That is why budget 2024 commits $1 billion over five years to a national food program to provide kids with healthy meals so that they can learn, grow and reach their full potential. This initiative will create new opportunities for local farmers, food processors, harvesters, and the under-represented and marginalized groups in the agriculture and food sector.
Canada's proposed national school food program would help ensure a bright future for schoolchildren across Canada and help us build a stronger economy for all Canadians. We all recognize the importance of supporting our youth, especially when they start their day. All too often, we consider the price of food as a hindrance, but this is what is necessary to ensure all those who need it most can be provided for.
To improve food security in Canada, we continue to work hard to make Canada's grocery sector stronger and more resilient. That includes our support of industry's effort to develop a grocery code of conduct. It is great to see that more grocers are now supporting the code. The goal is to make the relationship between retailers and suppliers more transparent and more predictable, for the good of the food supply chain. With key businesses participating, the code would be more effective; ultimately, this would benefit both the industry as a whole and consumers. The code needs to be implemented quickly so that it can increase the strength and resilience of Canada's food supply chain while building consumer confidence.
We fully recognize that rising food prices make things challenging for many Canadians and can worsen their food security status. Our government has made progress in addressing poverty as one of the main causes of food insecurity and is making life more affordable for Canadians via investments in child care and housing. We introduced a GST tax credit of $2.5 billion for families living with lower incomes, who are likely to be disproportionately impacted by inflation affecting food products, shelter and transportation. We have introduced targeted measures to improve overall affordability for Canadians, including delivering on more affordable child care options and a national dental care program.
In budget 2024, we committed to supporting competitive prices for groceries and other essentials and giving Canadians more choices by monitoring grocers' work to help stabilize prices, as well as investigating other price inflation practices in the grocery sector through the grocery task force; by maintaining the food price data hub to give Canadians detailed information on food prices, which helps them make informed decisions about their grocery options; by tackling shrinkflation, including through the office of consumer affairs, which has launched research projects to investigate and reveal price inflation and harmful business practices that reduce the quantity and quality of groceries; and by enhancing competition through the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, which amended the Competition Act to enhance competition, including in the grocery sector. This act gives more power to the Competition Bureau to crack down on unfair practices and empowers the Competition Bureau to block corporations from stifling competition.
The government will continue to fight for fair prices and to work collaboratively with all members of the House in order to achieve fairness in the system.
To truly strengthen our local food infrastructure, we must also look to our actions to protect the environment. We are making a concerted effort to address the environment, or at least some of us are. Not everyone on the other side agrees, but it is essential to fight climate change to improve the opportunities for our farmers. We are making historic investments of $1.5 billion to help Canadian farmers boost their climate resiliency through sustainable practices and technology.
Climate change ultimately affects and impacts all of us. We need to take real and concrete measures to help our producers provide food for Canada and around the world. However, they have to be competitive in a world market that does price carbon, and they have to be competitive in order to produce the product in a sustainable fashion.
We are not standing down. For example, over the past two years, our on-farm climate action fund has made available almost $100 million in direct support to over 4,000 farmers across Canada. With this, they can take action on their farms to reduce their carbon footprint through cover cropping, nitrogen management and rotational grazing.
All indications point to a strong interest in this program among farmers. That is why we are investing over $470 million to extend the program until 2028. Our agricultural clean-technology program has also provided over $200 million in funding over the past three years to support more than 400 on-farm projects across Canada, from solar energy to precision agriculture and energy-efficient grain-dryers. Under our agriscience program, we are supporting research to help provide differences in the agricultural sectors to reduce their carbon footprint, to find innovation and innovative ways to produce effectively while reducing our carbon footprint. For example, the beef cattle research cluster, backed by the industry's government investments of almost $22 million over the last five years, drives research to key industry priorities, including climate change and the environment.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has also launched the agricultural methane reduction challenge, which will offer prize money for up to $12 million for innovators advancing low-cost solutions to reduce methane emissions from cattle. Let us not forget that climate resilience is at the heart of the new sustainable Canadian agricultural partnership. This is a federal-provincial-territorial agreement on priorities and investments that will drive the Canadian agricultural and agri-food sector over the next five years. The new funding partnership will give producers and processors the tools they need to strengthen the sector's sustainability, competitiveness and resilience.
As part of this additional funding, the new $250-million cost-shared resilient agricultural landscape program is helping to recognize ecological goods and services produced by farmers. This is important for improving on-farm resiliency and biodiversity, while also contributing to the reduction of emissions in the sector. We also have a network of 14 living labs across Canada, where researchers work side by side with farmers to find environmental solutions that work on farms.
We are working beyond election cycles. This is long term in scope and in effect. We are working, then, to foster ways to support the industry for many years to come on the new sustainable agricultural strategy. Producers and other stakeholders are contributing to the development of this strategy, to ensure that Canada's agricultural sector is ready and able to recover quickly from extreme events, to thrive in changing climates, to meet our climate goals and to feed the world.
Taking action now is necessary to help reduce risks over the long term of extreme weather, new pests, flooding and drought. The impacts of a changing climate will continue to be felt by our farmers and ranchers and by all Canadians. It is our responsibility to act now, to ensure that Canadian food continues to be sustainably grown for our planet and for the generations to come.
Our government's investments are helping farmers harness cutting-edge technology to help feed Canadians and the world more sustainably. By taking action in all these key areas, we will not only drive sustainable food production for the future, but we will also improve food security in Canada and the world, as well as advancing towards meeting our United Nations sustainable development goal of zero hunger for 2030.
Food security is a concern, both globally and locally. The Government of Canada recognizes that, across Canada, food prices and food security concerns have been on the rise, putting pressure on household finances and making it more difficult for many families to afford nutritious foods. We continue working to strengthen Canada's food systems, from improving access to healthy and culturally diverse food to ensuring sustainable food production and processing, supporting strong local food infrastructure and reducing food waste.
Helping all people living in Canada to access healthy food is a priority. All Canadians, regardless of where they live, deserve access to affordable and nutritious food. We must work in concert with one another to achieve that goal.
Aside from the partisan attacks, there is so much at stake, and that is the livelihood of Canadians. We will do everything necessary to support our farmers and our communities to foster that sustainability and diversity. Food prices are essentially at the heart of the matter, because affordability matters at this point. The supply chain across the system has been strained. The initiative that we are taking is with a holistic policy that captures and deals with all the elements that are around the agri-food business, and the economy and the environment and all are at stake. Therefore, we will do everything we can to support those most in need, to foster ways to reduce food prices and to ensure a sustainable, long-term, prosperous agri-food industry in Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, it is just so nice to be here again this evening.
I know the Conservatives have tried to adjourn the House, calling quorum time and time again, because they really do not want to talk about the fact that people are starving, even though very often in the House they demean folks living in tent cities in poverty, folks who happen to live in my riding, actual human beings who are often struggling with mental health and addictions. The Conservatives put them down. We are talking about the cost of living, and the Conservatives weaponize, demean and stigmatize people living in poverty.
I am glad I get to rise here today to speak to an issue that is affecting people across the country: rising food costs, rising food insecurity and rising financial insecurity, which is one of the reasons I put forward a private member's bill, Bill C-223, in support of a guaranteed livable basic income.
We know things are getting harder for people. The cost of food has increased by over 20%, and we know that one in five Canadians is skipping meals. This is nothing new in my riding, a riding that has some very serious human rights violations directly related to poverty. What I have often said is that poverty is one of the most avoidable, violent human rights violations in this country. Poverty is a violation of the Canadian charter, yet the Conservatives today are trying to have the House adjourned because they really do not care about struggling Canadians.
I have not seen any of the Conservatives fight for issues that would change the material conditions for the folks I am so proud to represent in Winnipeg Centre. I am proud to represent all my constituents, including constituents who live in tents as a result of failed housing policies and the corporate greed that has been sponsored by Conservatives and Liberals, which is something we are talking about today.
We know the grocery sector is making record profits. In 2023 it raked in $6 billion. This is unconscionable, especially in a place like the riding of Winnipeg Centre. If we want to talk about people having a hard time, a hard time is figuring out every day how one is actually going to survive. What do the Conservatives do? I am bringing this up because it is pretty grotesque the way people in my community are put down regularly, stigmatized and marginalized. They are people who are doing their very best to survive, but as a result of failed housing policies by the Conservatives and Liberals, they are now living in tents, and nobody is talking about affordable housing with rent geared to income. Nobody is talking about co-operative housing except New Democrats.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives are trying to adjourn a debate on grocery pricing, which is totally unacceptable when people are struggling to make ends meet.
I cannot remember the name of his riding, but a member is trying to heckle. He probably has big feelings about my calling out the fact that he puts down some of the most vulnerable folks in Canada, many of whom live in my riding. I have to call that out, because I was elected to stick up for people, to respect people and to ensure that people have human rights and can live in dignity, not so they can be pushed down, shamed and kicked in the face by Conservatives.
We know that Conservatives do not care. I am going to give some examples. I have a whole textbook of headlines, and I hope I do not faint and run out of breath. The first ones are “Corporate lobbyists are flocking to [the member for Carleton]'s cash-for-access fundraisers” and “A Conservative collection of Harper...scandals”. There is a good one about the Senate appointees Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin. There are headlines about election scandals in 2006. There was Maxime Bernier. There are headlines about Veterans Affairs not looking after veterans; the Conservatives called that one a no-brainer.
On Afghan detainees, there was a news story about a Canadian diplomat, Richard Colvin, who appeared before a parliamentary committee and made a bombshell charge that detainees taken captive by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and transferred to local authorities were almost certainly being tortured and abused. Conservatives certainly do not care about newcomers to Canada and ensuring they live in dignity. There are articles about G8 funding and the $50 million spent.
Of course, let us not forget Peter MacKay, the guy who had to be rescued from a salmon fishing lodge in a private jet that cost $16,000. There is the fact that the member for Thornhill was recorded as a lobbyist for Walmart. The Conservatives were caught with the $50-million bread price-fixing scandal. There are many more examples, but I have important points to make. As I said, I just about fainted, running out of air with all the hot air I hear from the Conservatives all the time.
However, we know that some of these issues are the most severe in northern communities, which are being awfully impacted by the climate emergency. Farmers are concerned about the climate emergency because their crops are burning down. We want to talk about cost of living and things getting tough. Why do we not talk about the climate emergency and the fact that Manitoba farmers are concerned because they cannot make any money off their crops? They are literally burning to the ground.
Of indigenous households with children, 52% experience food insecurity compared to 9% of non-indigenous households. Food prices are 2.5 times higher in indigenous communities than the national average. We have heard all about nutrition north. There is the CEO of Giant Tiger, or the North West Company. Members of the Conservative Party are owners in that corporation, which is how closely tied they are, and they are making multi-millions of dollars.
The result is that many indigenous households have no choice but to rely on cheaper, less-nutritious options, such as highly saturated and processed foods, to feed their families. If we want to talk about saving money, how about ensuring that people can have access to nutritious foods so that we do not have greater costs to the health care system? Diabetes, for example, is often related to nutrition. Why do we not talk about that?
This affects dignity. It affects one's ability to live a healthy life. It causes psychological distress, and although the Liberals are talking about how they cannot put on price caps, the Liberals actually need to start talking about the fact that we need more competition. However, we do not need more grocery competition by big CEOs and these big companies, such as Metro, Loblaws or Walmart. We need more competition by supporting—
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