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Alberta

Canada’s food costs expected to increase by $700 per family in 2024: report

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

‘When Trudeau’s carbon tax makes it more expensive for farmers to grow food and truckers to deliver food, his carbon tax makes it more expensive for families to buy food’

A new report estimates that food costs for a family of four in Canada will increase by $700 in 2024 amid the ongoing carbon tax and rising inflation. 

On November 27, researchers from Dalhousie University, the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of British Columbia published Canada’s Food Price Report 2024, which reveals that food prices will only rise in 2024.  

“The current rate for food price increases is within the predicted range at 5.9% according to the latest available CPI data,” the report stated. The report further revealed that the increases are expected to be less than in 2023.  

According to the research, the total grocery bill for a family of four in 2024 is projected to be $16,297.20, which is a $701.79 increase from last year.   

Bakery, meat, and vegetables are expected to see a 5% to 7% increase, while dairy and fruit prices are projected to ride 1-3%. Restaurant and seafood costs are estimated to increase 3-5%.  

The report further revealed that, “Canadians are spending less on food this year despite inflation,” instead choosing either to buy less food or to buy poorer quality of food.  

“Food retail sales data indicates a decline from a monthly spend of $261.24 per capita in August 2022 to a monthly spend of $252.89 per capita in August 2023, indicating that Canadians are reducing their expenditures on groceries, either by reducing the quantity or quality of food they are buying or by substituting less expensive alternatives,” it continued.  

In addition to food prices, the report found that “household expenses like rent and utilities are also increasing year over year.”  

“A recent report by TransUnion found that the average Canadian has a credit card bill of $4,000 and a 4.2% increase in household debt compared to last year, all of which are possible contributors to reduced food expenditures for Canadians,” it continued.  

“When Trudeau’s carbon tax makes it more expensive for farmers to grow food and truckers to deliver food, his carbon tax makes it more expensive for families to buy food,” he explained.  

“The carbon tax will cost Canadian farmers $1 billion by 2030,” Terrazzano added. “The government could make groceries more affordable for Canadians by scrapping the carbon tax.” 

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre referenced the report, blaming the increased prices on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s policies, saying, “EVERYTHING is more expensive after 8 years of Trudeau. He’s not worth the cost.” 

The report should not come as a surprise to Canadians considering a September report by Statistics Canada revealing that food prices are rising faster than the headline inflation rate – the overall inflation rate in the country – as staple food items are increasing at a rate of 10 to 18 percent year-over-year. 

Despite numerous reports indicating Canadians are experiencing financial hardship, the Trudeau government has largely ignored the pleas of those asking for help, while consistently denying their policies have any impact on inflation or the economy more broadly. 

Trudeau has continued to refuse to extend the carbon tax exemption to all forms of home heating, instead only giving relief to Liberal voting provinces.  

The carbon tax, framed as a way to reduce carbon emissions, has cost Canadians hundreds more annually despite rebates.      

The increased costs are only expected to rise, as a recent report revealed that a carbon tax of more than $350 per tonne is needed to reach Trudeau’s net-zero goals by 2050.      

Currently, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $65 per tonne, but the Trudeau government has a goal of $170 per tonne by 2030.     

The Trudeau government’s current environmental goals – which are in lockstep with the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” – include phasing out coal-fired power plants, reducing fertilizer usage, and curbing natural gas use over the coming decades.  

The reduction and eventual elimination of so-called “fossil fuels” and a transition to unreliable “green” energy has also been pushed by the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the globalist group behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.  

However, some western provinces have declared they will not follow the regulations but instead focus on the wellbeing of Canadians.   

Both Alberta and Saskatchewan have repeatedly promised to place the interests of their people above the Trudeau government’s “unconstitutional” demands, while consistently reminding the federal government that their infrastructures and economies depend upon oil, gas, and coal.  

“We will never allow these regulations to be implemented here, full stop,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently declared. “If they become the law of the land, they would crush Albertans’ finances, and they would also cause dramatic increases in electricity bills for families and businesses across Canada.”      

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has likewise promised to fight back against Trudeau’s new regulations, saying recently that “Trudeau’s net-zero electricity regulations are unaffordable, unrealistic and unconstitutional.”    

“They will drive electricity rates through the roof and leave Saskatchewan with an unreliable power supply. Our government will not let the federal government do that to the Saskatchewan people,” he charged.   

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Alberta

Media melts down as Danielle Smith moves to end ‘transitioning’ of children in Alberta

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

After Alberta’s Danielle Smith put forth legislation to protect kids from being gender ‘transitioned,’ the Canadian media went on a predictable melt down, citing ‘experts’ who blatantly lie to advance the LGBT agenda.

A year after announcing her intention to combat transgender ideology and protect children, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has tabled three pieces of UCP (United Conservative Party) government legislation: 

  • The Education Amendment Act 2024 will require parental consent for “socially transitioning” children under the age of 16 (changing a child’s name or “preferred pronouns”). The bill also gives parents an “opt-in” option for any sexual or content at school. Smith has emphasized that the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission has the power to discipline teachers if they decide to break the law. 
  • The Health Statues Amendment Act 2024 will ban the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, as well as prohibit sex change surgeries on minors. 
  • The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act will ban trans-identifying men from female sports teams.  

Together, these three bills represent the most definitive pushback against gender ideology in Canada by any premier. Smith’s decision to announce her intent to pursue such legislation and then wait has turned out to be politically savvy—it has given the UCP government a good look at the LGBT response, and during that time the U.K.’s Labour government has successfully fought to maintain a similar ban in the courts and publicly rebutted many of the scare tactics used by LGBT activists.

Smith and the UCP are thus walking into this debate with eyes wide open, and are clearly certain that the public is on their side (it is) and that the legislation can survive the court challenges surely coming from LGBT activists. The policies are clearly popular with the UCP party’s base, who handed Smith a staggering 91.5% approval rating in her leadership review at UCP gathering in Red Deer last Saturday.  

The party also passed 35 policy resolutions, including several that indicate the UCP’s willingness to go further in fighting transgender ideology, with resolutions that would restrict “exclusively female spaces” like bathrooms and changerooms to females and designating transgender surgeries as “elective cosmetic procedures” not funded by the taxpayer. The motions received near-unanimous support.  

The Canadian press, unsurprisingly, is working hard to present policies that the vast majority of Canadians support as an attack on fundamental norms (albeit norms that only surfaced in the last few years and were never presented to voters). Global News ran the headline: “Alberta unveils 3 sweeping bills affecting trans and gender-diverse youth.” It is important to note that the press accepts the premises of transgender ideology as the starting point for their reporting, with heavy usage of nonsensical phrases like “gender-diverse youth,” which implies that there are many genders. 

In fact, Global News and other Canadian outlets trotted out talking points that have been definitively rebutted by the U.K.’s Cass Review and multiple medical studies—in fact, even the New York Times has been reporting on the permanent harms of puberty blockers over the past several years. An example from Global News: 

Alberta parents of gender-diverse youth like Haley Wray believe the new laws will give kids less choice — especially when it comes to health-care that is not permanent but instead, gives kids time to work through their identity struggles. 

‘Hormone blockers are a very valuable tool,’ Wray said, explaining they have a very small window of effectiveness to pause, but not prevent, puberty. ‘It is reversible because nothing changes. And what that does is it allows youth and families to have that that pause, that break to explore further, validate, understand what this means and know that permanent changes aren’t happening.’

Wray believes the proposed legislation will make the province a less safe place for tens of thousands of Alberta kids who aren’t straight. It’s why, Wray says, a growing number of families with transgender children are now grappling with whether Alberta is a place they can stay. ‘I know people who have, and I know people who genuinely feel like there is likely nowhere to go,’ she said. 

This is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause permanent damage, and children may be rendered permanently sterile after taking them for a relatively short period of time. Puberty is not something that can be “paused,” and it frequently causes irreversible rather than reversible damage. Smith and her government understand this, which is why they have decided to pass this legislation—not, as nearly every press outlet claimed, to “target trans youth,” but to protect them. 

The CBC chimed in with sentences like this one: 

Terms like ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity. 

To translate: a scientifically accurate and precise statement is now an ideological one, but inherently ideological language invented by the transgender movement over the past decade is, in fact, technically accurate. People can identify as anything they want; it is irrelevant to their biology. The CBC presents pointing this out as some sort of propagandistic attack on vulnerable people. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Alberta

Alberta calling for federal election! Premier Smith demands feds scrap dangerous oil and gas production caps

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Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean issued the following statement on the proposed federal oil and gas production cap:

“This production cap will hurt families, hurt businesses and hurt Canada’s economy. We will defend our province, our country and our Constitutional rights.

“Make no mistake, this cap violates Canada’s constitution. Section 92A clearly gives provinces exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development yet this cap will require a one million barrel a day production cut by 2030.

“The evidence is overwhelming. Three reports from reputable firms have shown that these regulations will sucker-punch Canada’s economy, a million barrels cut every day according to S&P Global, $28 billion a year in lost GDP according to Deloitte, and up to 150,000 lost jobs according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“The losses to GDP mean billions a year will disappear from the economy. Billions that won’t be going towards new schools, hospitals and roads, all for a reckless ideological scheme that will not reduce global emissions.

“Ultimately, this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less for groceries, mortgage payments and utilities every month. Canadian parents and workers will suffer while Justin Trudeau outsources the duty to provide safe, affordable, reliable and responsibly produced oil and gas to dictators and less clean producers around the world. We could be the solution. Instead, Ottawa would rather sacrifice our ability to lead.

“Tweaks won’t work. This cap must be scrapped. Alberta’s government is actively exploring the use of every legal option, including a constitutional challenge and the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda.”

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