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Economy

High food costs causing some Canadians to feel ‘hopeless’ and ‘desperate’: gov’t report

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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.”

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.

Business

Taxpayers criticize Trudeau and Ford for Honda deal

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Jay Goldberg

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is criticizing the Trudeau and Ford governments to for giving $5 billion to the Honda Motor Company.

“The Trudeau and Ford governments are giving billions to yet another multinational corporation and leaving middle-class Canadians to pay for it,” said Jay Goldberg, CTF Ontario Director. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is sending small businesses bigger a bill with his capital gains tax hike and now he’s handing out billions more in corporate welfare to a huge multinational.

“This announcement is fundamentally unfair to taxpayers.”

The Trudeau government is giving Honda $2.5 billion. The Ford government announced an additional $2.5 billion  subsidies for Honda.

The federal and provincial governments claim this new deal will create 1,000 new jobs, according to media reports. Even if that’s true, the handout will cost taxpayers $5 million per job. And according to Globe and Mail investigation, the government doesn’t even have a proper process in place to track whether promised jobs are actually created.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has also called into question the government’s claims when it made similar multi-billion-dollar handouts to other multinational corporations.

“The break-even timeline for the $28.2 billion in production subsidies announced for Stellantis-LGES and Volkswagen is estimated to be 20 years, significantly longer than the government’s estimate of a payback within five years for Volkswagen,” wrote the Parliamentary Budget Officer said.

“If politicians want to grow the economy, they should cut taxes and red tape and cancel the corporate welfare,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Just days ago, Trudeau said he wants the rich to pay more, so he should make rich multinational corporations pay for their own factories.”

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Business

Maxime Bernier warns Canadians of Trudeau’s plan to implement WEF global tax regime

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

If ‘the idea of a global corporate tax becomes normalized, we may eventually see other agreements to impose other taxes, on carbon, airfare, or who knows what.’

People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier has warned that the Liberal government’s push for World Economic Forum (WEF) “Global Tax” scheme should concern Canadians. 

According to Canada’s 2024 Budget, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is working to pass the WEF’s Global Minimum Tax Act which will mandate that multinational companies pay a minimum tax rate of 15 percent.

“Canadians should be very concerned, for several reasons,” People’s Party leader Maxime Bernier told LifeSiteNews, in response to the proposal.

“First, the WEF is a globalist institution that actively campaigns for the establishment of a world government and for the adoption of socialist, authoritarian, and reactionary anti-growth policies across the world,” he explained. “Any proposal they make is very likely not in the interest of Canadians.” 

“Second, this minimum tax on multinationals is a way to insidiously build support for a global harmonized tax regime that will lower tax competition between countries, and therefore ensure that taxes can stay higher everywhere,” he continued.  

“Canada reaffirms its commitment to Pillar One and will continue to work diligently to finalize a multilateral treaty and bring the new system into effect as soon as a critical mass of countries is willing,” the budget stated.  

“However, in view of consecutive delays internationally in implementing the multilateral treaty, Canada cannot continue to wait before taking action,” it continued.   

The Trudeau government also announced it would be implementing “Pillar Two,” which aims to establish a global minimum corporate tax rate. 

“Pillar Two of the plan is a global minimum tax regime to ensure that large multinational corporations are subject to a minimum effective tax rate of 15 per cent on their profits wherever they do business,” the Liberals explained.  

According to the budget, Trudeau promised to introduce the new legislation in Parliament soon.  

The global tax was first proposed by Secretary-General of Amnesty International at the WEF meeting in Davos this January.  

“Let’s start taxing carbon…[but] not just carbon tax,” the head of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, said during a panel discussion.  

According to the WEF, the tax, proposed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “imposes a minimum effective rate of 15% on corporate profits.”  

Following the meeting, 140 countries, including Canada, pledged to impose the tax.  

While a tax on large corporations does not necessarily sound unethical, implementing a global tax appears to be just the first step in the WEF’s globalization plan by undermining the sovereignty of nations.  

While Bernier explained that multinationals should pay taxes, he argued it is the role of each country to determine what those taxes are.   

“The logic of pressuring countries with low taxes to raise them is that it lessens fiscal competition and makes it then less costly and easier for countries with higher taxes to keep them high,” he said.  

Bernier pointed out that competition is good since it “forces everyone to get better and more efficient.” 

“In the end, we all end up paying for taxes, even those paid by multinationals, as it causes them to raise prices and transfer the cost of taxes to consumers,” he warned.  

Bernier further explained that the new tax could be a first step “toward the implementation of global taxes by the United Nations or some of its agencies, with the cooperation of globalist governments like Trudeau’s willing to cede our sovereignty to these international organizations.”   

“Just like ‘temporary taxes’ (like the income tax adopted during WWI) tend to become permanent, ‘minimum taxes’ tend to be raised,” he warned. “And if the idea of a global corporate tax becomes normalized, we may eventually see other agreements to impose other taxes, on carbon, airfare, or who knows what.”   

Trudeau’s involvement in the WEF’s plan should not be surprising considering his current environmental goals – which are in lockstep with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – which include the 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 – the aforementioned group famous for its socialist “Great Reset” agenda – in which Trudeau and some of his cabinet are involved.     

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