Food costs spark debates in farms and Ottawa

How could lower food prices impact the Maritimes?

Food costs have been a hot topic since Statistics Canada released its inflation numbers on Tuesday.

“We actually estimate that in Canada, Canadians pay anywhere between $7-to-$10-billion of GST on food in general,” says Sylvain Charlebois, the director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Lab.

HST on grocery store items is also driving prices higher. Things like fresh fruit and vegetables are exempt, but Charlebois says there is room for improvement.

“There are some really bizarre rules. For example, if you buy six bagels, you shouldn’t be paying taxes but if you buy just one bagel, you pay taxes on that,” he says.

“When you go to the read-to-eat counter, you have salads, healthy sandwiches as well and the rotisserie chicken is taxable at the grocery store whereas a chicken is not.”

Nationally, food inflation jumped to 7.3 per cent, year-over-year, in January. In Nova Scotia, the food inflation rate was 9.2 per cent. That number was even higher on Prince Edward Island, coming in at 10.1 per cent.

“What we have now is a hunger crisis in this country. 2.2 million people lined up at food banks. We’ve seen food prices rise at near record rates and those prices are accelerating,” Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said.

Farmers get HST refunds for things like fuel, fertilizer and packaging.

“Right now, when we have any bills that have HST associated with them, we then gather the invoices and put our claim into the government and we receive all of that HST back from the government,” says farmer Josh Oulton.

That’s a big help but for Oulton, his biggest expense is labour, accounting for more than half the cost of production.

“We need to be more efficient on how we do things.”

Farmers are also subject to parts of the federal industrial carbon tax, something the Opposition party wants removed.