Max Genest - January 28, 2026


Carney's New Grocery Program Costs $10 Billion


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

160.14696

Word count

988

Sentence count

57

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit is an extension of the GST credit the government already provides to low and modest income Canadians to help offset the cost of basic groceries. The problem people are facing at the grocery store is not a GST problem, it's a price problem.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is crazy. This is criminal, honestly. The Liberal Government of Canada just announced
00:00:05.020 a program that is going to cost us $10 billion. Prime Minister McCartney just announced the
00:00:10.540 so-called Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit. This program cost $3.1 billion in
00:00:17.080 2026, $1.3 billion in 2027, and about $1.8 billion every year after that through 2030.
00:00:25.420 All in, we're talking almost $10 billion here.
00:00:28.680 That is your money.
00:00:29.840 That is taxpayer money.
00:00:31.500 Now, before we get to the program, you must understand what this is built on.
00:00:34.980 This new benefit is really just an extension on the GST credit.
00:00:39.740 The GST credit is a cash payment the government already sends to low and modest income Canadians a few times a year.
00:00:47.500 you don't apply you just file your taxes and they send you money to supposedly offset the gst you
00:00:55.260 pay so what is the difference what are we changing here well they just modified the old one it's the
00:01:03.700 same thing but bigger with a one-time extra payment in the spring of 2026 and ongoing higher payments
00:01:11.840 for five years. And here is something very funny, something that shows a lot of volume.
00:01:18.360 Mark Carney announced this program at a grocery store where the price tags were all removed.
00:01:25.220 You did not see one price tag on anything. And the reason behind that is because they don't want you
00:01:30.900 to see how high the food prices really are. Think about it on their side. The optics would be
00:01:36.420 horrible because the hypocrisy would show food prices in canada have gone up by a lot everyone
00:01:43.300 feels it i feel it you feel it stats canada data shows since a year ago when mark carney became
00:01:49.360 prime minister food prices climbed around 6.2 percent that is the highest in the g7 that is
00:01:55.180 roughly double food inflation in the united states higher than most advanced economies and it is
00:02:00.880 totally unacceptable for a first world country so the government comes out and says we hear you 1.00
00:02:07.640 we're here to help and their solution is an extension to a program we already have
00:02:13.860 this is weak and it tells us they are completely disconnected and you want to talk about
00:02:19.960 disconnection ask yourself how many people qualify the feds brag that 12 million canadians
00:02:26.180 will get this benefit. That is 12 million people with low to modest incomes. That is 12 million
00:02:33.340 people who are struggling to make ends meet. This is not the win the liberals think it is.
00:02:40.520 It highlights how much work is needed to address poverty in our country. And ironically,
00:02:46.760 they just expose themselves. And you want to know what else? Basic groceries in Canada don't even
00:02:53.400 have GST on them. We're talking about essentials here, by the way. Bragg, milk, eggs, meat, produce,
00:02:59.100 and the items that are taxed are the extras. Snacks, soda, prepared foods, convenience items.
00:03:05.760 However, when you have a low to modest income, those extras are not on your essentials list.
00:03:12.060 Your essentials are the basics, and those basics are already tax exempt, and yet they're still so
00:03:18.200 expensive. So clearly, it is not a GST problem. It is a price problem. And when the government
00:03:23.940 frames this as help with grocery taxes, that is so dishonest. The problem people are facing at
00:03:29.880 the store is not GST. It is the fact that the prices themselves are so absurdly high.
00:03:35.900 And why are the prices high? It's a variety of things. Let's start off with mass immigration. 0.99
00:03:40.560 From 2016 to 2024, we've let in 1.4 million people into this country. For comparison,
00:03:47.120 between 2000 and 2015, we've let in around 670,000 people.
00:03:54.000 So when you're letting in this many people this fast
00:03:56.560 without any time to properly adjust,
00:03:59.060 the demand is going to be much higher than for supply.
00:04:03.140 So the cost of living is going to go up.
00:04:06.060 Everything is going to be more expensive.
00:04:07.840 And you have to consider the fact that farms and factories
00:04:10.760 are suffering under high taxes, insane regulations,
00:04:13.780 vast amounts of red tape, and they're smothered by bureaucracy.
00:04:17.840 And our grocery sector is run by all the same three suspects,
00:04:21.880 Loblaws, Sobeys, and Metro.
00:04:23.700 Now, these few represent 89% of the grocery stores.
00:04:28.240 So there's no competition.
00:04:29.780 And what that means is higher prices,
00:04:31.800 little innovation, and bad service.
00:04:33.680 So let's be very clear about what is actually happening
00:04:36.400 with this new program.
00:04:38.180 It doesn't lower food costs.
00:04:39.680 It doesn't increase competition.
00:04:41.380 It doesn't fix supply, regulation, or inflation.
00:04:43.940 actually overall what it does is causes more problems what is a solution that the carny
00:04:49.760 government can do that will help everybody that will relieve a lot of the pressure on this
00:04:55.360 situation well tax cutting so more people can keep more of their own money on every single paycheck
00:05:01.700 why is the government choosing to collect the same high taxes create a new program and then give some
00:05:08.300 of it back to some people this is simply keeping people poor and creating more poor people what we
00:05:15.400 really need is a broad tax cut it helps everyone immediately no forms no eligibility rules no
00:05:25.760 waiting for a quarterly payment you keep more of what you earn it is that simple but Carney's
00:05:30.920 approach treats high prices like it's permanent something that we have to just accept and deal
00:05:36.800 with and live around instead of actually fixing it so yeah some people will welcome the money
00:05:43.640 that is totally understandable i get it but let's not pretend this is the real solution it is barely
00:05:49.220 a band-aid it doesn't fix anything it just causes more problems in the end game it's expensive and
00:05:55.720 it avoids a harder conversation about why life is getting so expensive in the first place and i'm
00:06:02.520 going to give you a hint, the perpetrators here are the liberals. And Canadians really do deserve 1.00
00:06:08.400 honesty about that.