A motion to lower the cost of essential food was shot down in parliament earlier this week, with essentially only the Green Party and NDP in favour.
The NDP brought forward the motion, which included forcing big chains like Loblaws, Metro and Sobeys to lower the prices of essential food or face a price cap or other measures.
Among the naysayers was MP Lloyd Longfield, who said the motion was largely redundant to what the liberals are already trying to do with Bill C-59.
“The motion is pointing out the need to work on the food industry for sure, but we have Bill C-59 in the senate right now, and that’s doing largely what this motion was trying to accomplish.”
As part of the bill, he said the government has been revising the Competition Act to focus on getting the competition bureau more tools to use to protect consumers against anti-competitive practices like mergers and buying up small grocery stores.
“In this act, if a store was bought up, there would have to be provisions for a smaller store to be able to start up in its place as one of the practical things,” he said.
He said the act also includes incentives for other grocery chains to come to Canada to encourage competition and lower prices.
The motion also called for an end to liberal and conservative corporate handouts to big grocers, and an end to delays for “long-needed reforms to the Nutrition North program.”
Longfield said the liberals have been working on the Nutrition North program since being elected.
“We’ve tripled the subsidy on Nutrition North, and we’re really focusing on supporting food harvesters in Indigenous communities,” he said. “We're also working on (agricultural) development in Indigenous communities so that we can get more locally sourced food. Our subsidy there has gone from $54 million to $148 million. So there's some serious changes that we've done on the Nutrition North program.
Regarding the handouts, he said he’s going to vote to keep corporate handouts to big grocers, as they try to work with grocers “ to make sure that they're not taking advantage of their size to force prices up.”
He added that grocery inflation has been coming down, and as of April was down to 1.4 per cent, down from 1.9 per cent in March.
“We’re heading in the right direction. We expect that’s going to continue,” he said.
He said Bill C-59 is expected to come back from the senate before they rise in the next few weeks.
“It's really frustrating how long it takes to see things get through for no good reason,” he said. “But in the meantime, consumers are continuing to struggle with the price of groceries.”
“I'm really hopeful that we're seeing things turn around. We're certainly not sitting on the sidelines. We've been working hard to get (inflation) to where it is, and we're not finished yet. We're hoping that the interest rate is going to continue to drop and drop and drop over the next two years,” he said.
