44th Parl. 1st Sess.

June 4, 2024 10:00AM

Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Jun/4/24 3:46:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to be able to stand and represent the people of Edmonton Strathcona. Today we are talking about the increasing price of groceries. I want to start by talking a bit about my son. I have a 16-year-old. He is 6 feet, 3 inches tall. He is involved in rugby, football, hockey and wrestling. I can tell members very clearly that I know how much groceries cost, because that kid eats a lot. However, I also want to talk about some other folks in my riding. My dear friend Luanne came to my office. She is a senior, and, as one of my colleagues from the Bloc has mentioned, the government refuses to raise the OAS payments. Seniors are living right on the edge in my riding. Luanne came and asked about buying a little meat for her elderly mother. Luanne is living on OAS. She is trying to make ends meet, and she just wants a little meat for her mother in Canada, in Edmonton, in Alberta. I want to talk about people living with disabilities. Bev, one of my fantastic constituents, actually has a guinea pig that she dresses up in Oilers colours; Bev's guinea pig is in my pet calendar that I give out to my constituents. Once again, I want to just take a moment to say congratulations to the Edmonton Oilers. She came in with a meticulously written budget of exactly where every single one of the dollars she gets from AISH goes, and there is no room for error there. There is no going out for dinner. She lives so close to the line. She is so cautious and so careful, and every time grocery prices go up, it is another hit on Bev and another time that she cannot afford groceries. These are seniors and people living with disabilities in our communities, but I want to say that this is not all. Folks who have jobs and who are working can no longer afford to pay for their groceries; they can no longer afford to eat in this country. This is a huge problem, and the cost of food just keeps going up and up. In the last three years, the price of groceries has gone up by 20%. Food banks have reached a 35-year high, and food banks in and of themselves are not a solution: They are a band-aid. Edmonton's Food Bank served 42,000 people in April alone, and a new report by Food Banks Canada said that Alberta's food insecurity rate is 27% higher than the national average. Canadians are skipping meals. This is completely unacceptable, and government is urgently required to step up and help. We cannot continue to wait and to watch the Liberals nicely ask CEOs, who are raking in millions and billions of dollars of profit, to stop. That is not how we fix this problem. If I were to ask nicely for my 16-year-old to clean his room, it might not happen. Sometimes there have to be consequences if he does not do it. I would propose to the government that this may be the same case. Loblaws doubled its profit margin in five years. Metro has the biggest profit margin of any grocery store. In fact, in 2023, the grocery sector made record profits, raking in $6 billion. When is it enough? We should all be asking that. When is it enough profit for them? Canadians cannot afford their groceries; people cannot afford to eat. I should not even get started on what is happening in the northern part of this country. The member for Nunavut has been fearless and tireless in raising this issue, day in and day out, in this place. However, we continue to see the nutrition north program contribute to corporate greed. Of the $137 million that went to nutrition north, $64 million went to the North West Company, and the CEO of that company was paid millions. My colleague from Nunavut has told me that, when she goes to buy eggs in a store not run by the North West Company, they are half the price. The system is broken. Nutrition north is broken. This means that people in the north are not able to access food and that the Liberals' promise to help people be able to afford food in the north is simply contributing to corporate greed. What fix have we seen? The Liberals have set up a task force. They have done no tasks, nor are they much of a force, to take the words from one of my colleagues from British Columbia. Again, it is a perfect example of Liberal talk with no action behind it. We have seen this time and time again. Then we look at the Conservatives, and they have lobbyists within the highest level of their party. When the Conservatives were in power, they cut the corporate tax rate from 22% to 15%, which cost $60 billion in corporate handouts, and $2.35 billion of that went to Loblaws and Metro. In the U.S., they have a 21% corporate tax rate, and they are trying to get that up to 28%. These are handouts to corporations that are gouging Canadians. The Conservatives did this because these are their friends, those whom they represent. This is who is part of their party. These are their donors. Why would we expect that they would do anything else? Here is what we are asking for, what the NDP needs to see: We want to make sure that things are fair for Canadians. We want it to be fair for people to go out and to buy their groceries. My leader, the leader from Burnaby South, and the rest of the NDP caucus want to force big grocery chains and suppliers to lower the price of essential foods or to face consequences such as a price cap. That is a concrete step we could take now. That is a concrete piece of action that could be taken and that would have immediate effects on Canadians' grocery prices. We want to stop delaying long-needed reforms on nutrition north programming. This program is not working. It is contributing to corporate greed, and people in the north deserve to be able to afford nutritious, good food. That is not happening right now. We need to stop the Liberal and Conservative corporate handouts to big grocers. There has been enough of giving money to those who are making the lives of Canadians harder. The NDP has been leading on this issue for years. I understand that the Liberals and the Conservatives want to jump on this bandwagon. Obviously, the Liberals' plan is to talk about how concerned they are, perhaps get a task force together, consult with somebody and ask nicely. The Conservatives' plan, of course, would be to continue to give out corporate handouts to their friends. Their leader, the Stornoway king, is the guy who lives in the 19-room mansion paid for by taxpayers. He is not going to take away the gravy train that all his funders give him. Canadians are going to need to depend on the NDP for this. We have been raising it in committee and in the House for years. The NDP has a plan. We have put forward this plan. There are concrete steps that every member in the House could take. Every member could vote for the motion. It would help Canadians. It would help members' constituents. Canadians are running out of time. I hope members support the motion.

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