From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Department of Social Development stated in a recent briefing note that the nation’s poverty rate could increase by 14% this year due to high food prices.

The Canadian government’s own National Advisory Council on Poverty (NACP) observed in a recent update to the nation’s Parliament that fast-rising food costs in Canada have led to many people feeling a sense of “hopelessness and desperation” with nowhere to turn for help.

As noted by Blacklock’s Reporter, NACP stated last week in a report to Parliament that its coming 2024 spring figures regarding the poverty rate in Canada show it standing at 9.8%, affecting some four million Canadians, compared with a low of 6.4 in 2020.

“We noted a growing sense of hopelessness and desperation,” the NACP said in its report titled Blueprint for Transformation.

NACP observed how persons with lived “expertise of poverty and service providers alike told us things seem worse now than they were before and during the first years of the pandemic.”

“We heard that people are worried about the rising cost of living and inflation,” the report added.

According to the NACP report, more people are in “crisis and these crises are more visible in our communities.”

NACP said that recent increases in cost of living “represent one of the most important socioeconomic challenges faced by people living in Canada following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

High living costs in Canada will “put upward pressure on poverty rates,” the NACP said.

NACP observed that in speaking with people, it seems as “though the feelings of hopefulness and optimism for change that we saw early in the pandemic have faded.”

“Hopelessness and desperation have replaced these as the cost of living continues to increase,” NACP documented.

Food costs are going up so fast that even Canada’s own Department of Social Development in a recent briefing note stated that the nation’s poverty rate could increase by 14% this year due to high food prices.

Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, due to excessive COVID money printing, inflation has skyrocketed.

A report from September 5, 2023, by Statistics Canada shows food prices are rising faster than headline inflation at a rate of between 10% and 18% per year.

According to a recent Statistics Canada supermarket survey of prices, Canadians are now paying 12% more for carrots, 14% more for hamburger (ground meat), and some 27% more for baby formula.

“Chronic issues are becoming more acute,” the Council on Poverty wrote. “These include inadequate income, unmet housing needs and houselessness, food insecurity and worsening physical and mental health.”

NACP noted that although poverty rates fell between 2015 and 2020, these declines were not “sustained” and the rates will now “increase even further.”

Trudeau’s carbon tax adds to high inflation and food costs and should be ‘scrapped’

Last year, the Bank of Canada acknowledged that Trudeau’s federal “climate change” programs, which have been deemed “extreme” by some provincial leaders, are indeed helping to fuel inflation.

Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told LifeSiteNews that Trudeau should “completely scrap his carbon tax,” as it is making everything more expensive.

Terrazzano said at the “very least” Trudeau should “extend the same relief he provided to Atlantic Canadians and take the carbon tax off everyone’s home heating bill.”

In October, amid dismal polling numbers that showed his government would be defeated in a landslide by the Conservative Party come the next election, Trudeau announced he was pausing the collection of the carbon tax on home heating oil in Atlantic Canadian provinces for three years.

LifeSiteNews has earlier reported on Trudeau’s carbon tax costing Canadians hundreds of dollars annually, as government rebates it gives out are not enough to compensate for high fuel costs.

A report by four Canadian universities in December showed that an average family of four will spend approximately $16,297 on groceries in 2024.