Just The Facts: Canadians Can’t Eat Carney’s Illusions

Ottawa, ON - Last week, Mark Carney told Canadians that "affordability is the best it's been in over a decade," but Canadians know this is another Liberal illusion. The reality they feel every day was confirmed by a new Statistics Canada report, which found that 9.8 million Canadians live in food-insecure households.

24 per cent of Canadians now live in households reporting food insecurity with 11.9 per cent reporting moderate insecurity and 6.5 per cent saying they're severely food insecure. 47.4 per cent of single mothers report food insecurity while 30.8 per cent of children - 2.4 million - and 30.4 per cent of single non-seniors live in a food-insecure household.

These figures were confirmed by Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab, which found that 34 per cent of respondents needed to draw from savings or borrow money to purchase food in the last year. 81.1 per cent say their food expenses have increased the most over the last year with 56.7 per cent reporting a significant increase.

Over 20 per cent of those surveyed now say they spend more than $600 on groceries each month with Canadians as a whole paying almost $23 more per month on food, a 4.6 per cent increase year-over-year. And they see no sign of it slowing down with 30.7 per cent expecting prices to rise 5 to 7 per cent over the next year.

Conservatives have been fighting for affordable food by axing the taxes on groceries and Canadians agree with 87.7 per cent supporting eliminating taxes on food in Canada. It's time for the Liberals to listen and axe the fuel standard and industrial carbon tax, scrapping the food packaging tax and ending inflationary spending to make life affordable again.