News
If you thought this year was pricey, get ready for your food bill to go up by almost $1,000 in 2022 – CBC News
Sky-high food prices were one of many negative impacts that Canadians felt during the pandemic-plagued year of 2021. And a new report suggests that problem is only going to get worse next year.
Canada’s Food Price Guide, released today, is an annual report published by Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph that’s the most comprehensive set of data currently available about a subject that all Canadians are impacted by: food.
As with everything else, supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on food prices and availability. Weather events such as the heat dome also didn’t help put food on the table.
“The meat counter was a big deal this year,” said Sylvain Charlebois, the chief researcher on the report and a professor studying food distribution and security at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
“It really pushed food inflation much higher.”
This time last year, the report was forecasting an increase of between three and five per cent for food prices, with a theoretical family of four consisting of one man, one woman, one boy, and one girl, on track to pay about $13,907 to feed themselves in 2021.
As it turns out, they were only over by $106. The report tabulates that theoretical family ended up spending $13,801 to feed themselves this year.
Grocery bills set to rise even more
In the coming year, Charlebois says food price inflation is on track to be higher with a likely increase of between five and seven per cent — or an extra $966 for the typical family grocery bill
“It’s the highest increase that we’re predicting in 12 years, both in terms of dollars and percentage,” Charlebois said. “It’s not going to be easy.”
As usual, different types of food are expected to go up in price at different rates, with dairy and baked goods expected to be comparatively much more pricey, while past culprits like meat and seafood will look comparatively flat.
The report says dairy is set to get more expensive because of higher input costs for things like feed, energy and fertilizer, along with higher transportation and labour costs. The Canadian Dairy Commission warned as much in a report last month, asking the government to allow an 8.4 per cent increase in retail milk prices to account for those added costs on the production side.
Baked goods, meanwhile, are in for sharp price increases largely because the hot summer on the prairies was devastating to wheat and other crops, the report says.
The other reasons for the uptick are varied, but an increasingly large factor is the growing cost of food waste. More than half of all the food produced in Canada gets thrown out, research suggests, and that inefficiency is finally starting to show up at the cash register at a time when Canadians are counting their pennies more than ever.
Which is why some Canadians are trying to do something about it.
Jagger Gordon is the founder of Feed It Forward, a non-profit program that has set up nearly a dozen pay-what-you-can grocery stores across Canada to give people access to nutritious and affordable food.
Gordon, a chef, says he was inspired to develop the idea when he did catered events and was horrified by the amount of food that went to waste.
“I wanted to showcase how we can eliminate that food waste, be socially responsible and give dignity back to people by utilizing it and putting it back into meals and onto their tables,” Jagger said in an interview at his location on Dundas St. in downtown Toronto.
The food on the shelves at the store comes from various grocery stores, bakeries, processing plants, restaurants and other agencies in and around the city. Shoppers can come in and browse the selection of food on offer to cook themselves, or get recipes and a pre-made selections of meals on site, without having to necessarily worry if they can afford it when it comes time to leave the store. For every $5 a customer chooses to pay, they can get about $20 worth of food, Gordon says.
The system works in large part because it takes advantage of food that other food businesses can’t sell but is otherwise perfectly fine — food that’s about to expire, for example, or fresh vegetables that aren’t the right shape.
“A lot of grocery stores also, if there’s one grape that’s gone fuzzy in a package, they’ll destroy the whole package rather than taking the time just to pull it out,” Gordon said. “What shocks me is the resources that are put into all have that production for that plant or product to be developed to be destroyed so easily.”
Big discounts possible
Charlebois says there’s a growing trend from some stores and consumers to try to bring down that waste by finding ways to sell it to those who want it.
“Grocers are empowering consumers to rescue food more [by] showcasing products that are about to expire at a discount 25 to 50 per cent off,” he said. “People are starting to realize that the aesthetics that we see in the grocery store is costing us money.”
While many consumers have embraced a new trend for organic food, Gordon says it’s made food waste even worse in some ways. “They blemish fast,” he said. “They’ll be just discarded or destroyed sooner.”
Some options
It’s not hard to find Canadians who are changing their habits and making different choices in their grocery cart or restaurant menus to try to offset rising costs.
Browsing the aisles of the grocery store in St. John’s, Myrtle Mitchell says she’s had to change how she shops because of higher costs. “Prices are almost double,” she said in an interview, which puts stress on her fixed income.
She tries to shop on sale where she can, but she can only do so much. Which is why at the grocery store, she goes straight to the essentials first “then I circle around and then I go up and down the extra rows. If I know I’ve got money left, I go and pick up extra groceries that I have extra stock for.”
WATCH | How higher food prices are affecting this senior on a fixed income:
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Once she pays her bills, Myrtle Mitchell takes what’s left and divides it by four to determine how much she can spend each week on food. She’s watching groceries get more expensive and on a fixed income, that’s troublesome. 2:44
It’s a similar story for Nicola Moore in Hamilton. When the pandemic started, she worried about access to food, so she got into gardening to feed her family. “I ended up harvesting … spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes … a garden variety of vegetables,” she said in an interview. “That helped me financially because …I got it for free basically just by going and watering every day.”
Growing a garden was helpful but ultimately she still needs to go to the store for food, and she, too, says she’s changing how she does that. “I’m hunting for bargains. I’m looking for coupons online. I have an app on my phone that tells me when the sales are.”
Back in Toronto, at the pay-what-you-can grocery store, Jerry Oshomah has nothing but rave reviews for what his neighbour Gordon is doing to help Canadians who need a hand with sky-high food prices
“In the pandemic, it’s a little bit difficult because people work from home, and the pain is a little bit high, but it’s okay,” he said, while buying some soup for himself and drinks for his staff at his nearby office.
“It’s a very good store for the neighborhood,” he said. “This guy is good — he helps everybody.”
News
Capital gains tax change draws ire from some Canadian entrepreneurs worried it will worsen brain drain – CBC.ca
A chorus of Canadian entrepreneurs and investors is blasting the federal government’s budget for expanding a tax on the rich. They say it will lead to brain drain and further degrade Canada’s already poor productivity.
In the 2024 budget unveiled Tuesday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government would increase the inclusion rate of the capital gains tax from 50 per cent to 67 per cent for businesses and trusts, generating an estimated $19 billion in new revenue.
Capital gains are the profits that individuals or businesses make from selling an asset — like a stock or a second home. Individuals are subject to the new changes on any profits over $250,000.
The government estimates that the changes would impact 40,000 individuals (or 0.13 per cent of Canadians in any given year) and 307,000 companies in Canada.
However, some members of the business community say that expanding the taxable amount will devastate productivity, investment and entrepreneurship in Canada, and might even compel some of the country’s talent and startups to take their business elsewhere.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland unveiled the government’s 2024 federal budget, with spending targeted at young voters and a plan to raise capital gains taxes for some of the wealthiest Canadians.
Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), said the capital gains tax has overshadowed parts of the federal budget that the business community would otherwise be excited about.
“There were definitely some other stars in the budget that were interesting,” he said. “However, the … capital gains piece really is the sun, and it’s daylight. So this is really the only thing that innovators can see.”
The CCI has written and is circulating an open letter signed by more than 1,000 people in the Canadian business community to Trudeau’s government asking it to scrap the tax change.
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and president Harley Finkelstein also weighed in on the proposed hike on X, formerly known as Twitter.
We need to be doing everything we can to turn Canada into the best place for entrepreneurs to build 🇨🇦<br><br>What’s proposed in the federal budget will do the complete opposite. Innovators and entrepreneurs will suffer and their success will be penalized — this is not a wealth tax,…
—@harleyf
Former finance minister Bill Morneau said his successor’s budget disincentivizes businesses from investing in the country’s innovation sector: “It’s probably very troubling for many investors.”
Canada’s productivity — a measure that compares economic output to hours worked — has been relatively poor for decades. It underperforms against the OECD average and against several other G7 countries, including the U.S., Germany, U.K. and Japan, on the measure.
Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers sounded the alarm on Canada’s lagging productivity in a speech last month, saying the country’s need to increase the rate had reached emergency levels, following one of the weakest years for the economy in recent memory.
The government said it was proposing the tax change to make life more affordable for younger generations and fund efforts to boost housing supply — and that it would support productivity growth.
A challenge for investors, founders and workers
The change could have a chilling effect for several reasons, with companies already struggling to access funding in a high interest rate environment, said Bergen.
He questioned whether investors will want to fund Canadian companies if the government’s taxation policies make it difficult for those firms to grow — and whether founders might just pack up.
The expanded inclusion rate “is just one of the other potential concerns that firms are going to have as they’re looking to grow their companies.”
He said the rejigged tax is also an affront to high-skilled workers from low-innovation sectors who might have taken the risk of joining a startup for the opportunity, even taking a lower wage on the chance that a firm’s stock options grow in value.
But Lindsay Tedds, an associate economics professor at the University of Calgary, said the tax change is one of the most misunderstood parts of the federal budget — and that its impact on the country’s talent has been overstated.
“This is not a major innovation-biting tax change treatment,” Tedds said. “In fact, when you talk to real grassroots entrepreneurs that are setting up businesses, tax rates do not come into their decision.”
As for productivity, Tedds said Canadians might see improvements in the long run “to the degree that some of our productivity problems are driven by stresses like housing affordability, access to child care, things like that.”
‘One foot on the gas, one foot on the brake’
Some say the government is sending mixed messages to entrepreneurs by touting tailored tax breaks — like the Canada Entrepreneurs’ Incentive, which reduces the capital gains inclusion rate to 33 per cent on a lifetime maximum of $2 million — while introducing measures they say would dampen investment and innovation.
“They seem to have one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake on the very same file,” said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Some business groups are worried that new capital gains tax changes could hurt economic growth. But according to Small Business Minister Rechie Valdez, most Canadians won’t be impacted by that change — and it’s a move to create fairness.
A founder may be able to sell their successful company with a lower capital gains treatment than otherwise possible, he said.
“At the same time, though, big chunks of it may be subject to a higher rate of capital gains inclusion.”
Selling a company can fund an individual’s retirement, he said, which is why it’s one of the first things founders consider when they think about capital gains.
Mainstreet NS7:03Ottawa is proposing a hike to capital gains tax. What does that mean?
Tuesday’s federal budget includes nearly $53 billion in new spending over the next five years with a clear focus on affordability and housing. To help pay for some of that new spending, Ottawa is proposing a hike to the capital gains tax. Moshe Lander, an economics lecturer at Concordia University, joins host Jeff Douglas to explain.
Dennis Darby, president and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, says he was disappointed by the change — and that it sends the wrong message to Canadian industries like his own.
He wants to see the government commit to more tax credit proposals like the Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses, which he said would incentivize business owners to stay and help make Canada competitive with the U.S.
“We’ve had a lot of difficulties attracting investment over the years. I don’t think this will make it any better.”
Tech titan says change will only impact richest of the rich
Toronto tech entrepreneur Ali Asaria will be one of those subject to the expanded capital gains inclusion rate — but he says it’s only fair.
“It’s going to really affect the richest of the rich people,” Asaria, CEO of open source platform Transformer Lab and founder of well.ca, told CBC News.
“The capital gains exemption is probably the largest tax break that I’ve ever received in my life,” he said. “So I know a lot about what that benefit can look like, but I’ve also always felt like it was probably one of the most unfair parts of the tax code today.”
While Asaria said Canada needs to continue encouraging talent to take risks and build companies in the country, taxation policies aren’t the most major problem.
“I think that the biggest central issue to the reason why people will leave Canada is bigger issues, like housing,” he said.
“How do we make it easier to live in Canada so that we can all invest in ourselves and invest in our companies? That’s a more important question than, ‘How do we help the top 0.13 per cent of Canadians make more money?'”
More money will land in the pockets of Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit (CCB) installment.
The federal government program helps low and middle-income families struggling with the soaring cost of raising a child.
Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or refugees who are the primary caregivers for children under 18 years old are eligible for the program, introduced in 2016.
The non-taxable monthly payments are based on a family’s net income and how many children they have. Families that have an adjusted net income under $34,863 will receive the maximum amount per child.
For a child under six years old, an applicant can annually receive up to $7,437 per child, and up to $6,275 per child for kids between the ages of six through 17.
That translates to up to $619.75 per month for the younger cohort and $522.91 per month for the older group.
The benefit is recalculated every July and most recently increased 6.3 per cent in order to adjust to the rate of inflation, and cost of living.
To apply, an applicant can submit through a child’s birth registration, complete an online form or mail in an application to a tax centre.
The next payment date will take place on May 17.
Keffiyehs remain banned in the Ontario Legislature after a unanimous consent motion that would have allowed the scarf to be worn failed to pass at Queen’s Park Thursday.
That vote, brought forth by NDP Leader Marit Stiles, failed despite Premier Doug Ford and the leaders of the province’s opposition parties all stating they want to see the ban overturned. Complete agreement from all MPPs is required for a motion like this to pass, and there were a smattering of “nos” after it was read into the record.
In an email on Wednesday, Speaker Ted Arnott said the legislature has previously restricted the wearing of clothing that is intended to make an “overt political statement” because it upholds a “standard practice of decorum.”
“The Speaker cannot be aware of the meaning of every symbol or pattern but when items are drawn to my attention, there is a responsibility to respond. After extensive research, I concluded that the wearing of keffiyehs at the present time in our Assembly is intended to be a political statement. So, as Speaker, I cannot authorize the wearing of keffiyehs based on our longstanding conventions,” Arnott said in an email.
Speaking at Queen’s Park Thursday, Arnott said he would reconsider the ban with unanimous consent from MPPs.
“If the house believes that the wearing of the keffiyeh in this house, at the present time, is not a political statement, I would certainly and unequivocally accept the express will of the house with no ifs, ands or buts,” he said.
Keffiyehs are a commonly worn scarf among Arabs, but hold special significance to Palestinian people. They have been a frequent sight among pro-Palestinian protesters calling for an end to the violence in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war continues.
Premier calls for reversal
Ford said Thursday he’s hopeful Arnott will reverse the ban, but he didn’t say if he would instruct his caucus to support the NDP’s motion.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Ford said the decision was made by the speaker and nobody else.
“I do not support his decision as it needlessly divides the people of our province. I call on the speaker to reverse his decision immediately,” Ford said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford reiterated Thursday that he does not support Speaker Ted Arnott banning keffiyehs in the Ontario Legislature because they are “intended to be a political statement,” as Arnott said in an email Wednesday.
PC Party MPP Robin Martin, who represents Eglinton–Lawrence, voted against the unanimous consent motion Thursday and told reporters she believes the speaker’s initial ruling was the correct one.
“We have to follow the rules of the legislature, otherwise we politicize the entire debate inside the legislature, and that’s not what it’s about. What it’s about is we come there and use our words to persuade, not items of clothing.”
When asked if she had defied a directive from the premier, Martin said, “It has nothing to do with the premier, it’s a decision of the speaker of the legislative assembly.”
Stiles told reporters Thursday she’s happy Ford is on her side on this issue, but added she is disappointed the motion didn’t pass.
“The premier needs to talk to his people and make sure they do the right thing,” she said.
Stiles first urged Arnott to reconsider the ban in an April 12 letter. She said concerns over the directive first surfaced after being flagged by members of her staff, however they have gained prominence after Sarah Jama, Independent MPP for Hamilton Centre, posted about the issue on X, formerly Twitter.
Jama was removed from the NDP caucus for her social media comments on the Israel-Hamas war shortly after Oct. 7.
Jama has said she believes she was kicked out of the party because she called for a ceasefire in Gaza “too early” and because she called Israel an “apartheid state.”
Arnott told reporters Thursday that he began examining a ban on the Keffiyeh after one MPP made a complaint about another MPP, who he believes was Jama, who was wearing one.
Liberals also call for reversal
Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie also called for a reversal of the ban on Wednesday night.
“Here in Ontario, we are home to a diverse group of people from so many backgrounds. This is a time when leaders should be looking for ways to bring people together, not to further divide us. I urge Speaker Arnott to immediately reconsider this move to ban the keffiyeh,” Crombie said.
Keffiyehs are a common garment across the Arab world, but they hold a special meaning in the Palestinian resistance movement.
Stiles said MPPs have worn kilts, kirpans, vyshyvankas and chubas in the legislature, saying such items of clothing not only have national and cultural associations, but have also been considered at times as “political symbols in need of suppression.”
She said Indigenous and non-Indigenous members have also dressed in traditional regalia and these items cannot be separated from their historical and political significance.
“The wearing of these important cultural and national clothing items in our Assembly is something we should be proud of. It is part of the story of who we are as a province,” she said.
“Palestinians are part of that story, and the keffiyeh is a traditional clothing item that is significant not only to them but to many members of Arab and Muslim communities. That includes members of my staff who have been asked to remove their keffiyehs in order to come to work. This is unacceptable.”
Stiles added that House of Commons and other provincial legislatures allow the wearing of keffiyehs in their chambers and the ban makes Ontario an “outlier.”
Suppression of cultural symbols part of genocide: MPP
Jama said on X that the ban is “unsurprising” but “nonetheless concerning” in a country that has a legacy of colonialism. “Part of committing genocide is the forceful suppression of cultural identity and cultural symbols,” she said in part.
“Seeing those in power in this country at all levels of government, from federal all the way down to school boards, aid Israel’s colonial regime with these tactics in the oppression of Palestinian people proves that reconciliation is nothing but a word when spoken by state powers,” she said.
Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, said on X that it is “deeply ironic” on that keffiyehs were banned in the Ontario legislature on the 42nd anniversary of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“This is wrong and dangerous as we have already seen violence and exclusion impact Canadians, including Muslims of Palestinian descent, who choose to wear this traditional Palestinian clothing,” Elghawaby said.
Arnott said the keffiyeh was not considered a “form of protest” in the legislature prior to statements and debates that happened in the House last fall.
“These items are not absolutes and are not judged in a vacuum,” he said.
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