The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Canada is going hungry.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:06.020 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps of the Lakes Brock with

00:00:09.220 new content for you every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. We ask, as always, that

00:00:13.780 you like, comment, subscribe and share this program. You can tell your friends they can

00:00:18.240 hear it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play and Spotify. You name it, it is

00:00:23.000 out there. A great show lined up for you today. Today's guest is the person who blew the lid

00:00:29.100 off the Tim Hortons paper lid experiment that failed so miserably. Thank you very much,

00:00:34.980 Leanne Rood, the Member of Parliament for Lampton Cat Middlesex. Thanks for coming on.

00:00:38.720 Thank you for having me today, Jamie. Do you want to quickly talk about this little

00:00:41.640 lid experiment that Tim Hortons had going on that you, I guess, blew up the internet with?

00:00:47.940 Well, it was meant actually just to bring to attention some of the policies of this current

00:00:53.560 NDP Liberal government and how nonsensical they are. And we see companies trying to do

00:00:59.040 good. And I don't want to, the intent wasn't to slam Tim Hortons for trying to do good. It was

00:01:03.940 actually about the plastics ban that the Liberal NDP government wants to extend beyond just a paper

00:01:12.000 straw or banning a plastic straw or banning your grocery bags. They actually want to extend it to

00:01:17.280 fresh fruits and vegetables and banning them from being wrapped in plastic or shipped in plastic

00:01:21.780 containers. And that was what that was meant to do is to just draw attention to that. And it certainly

00:01:26.600 did. And I apologize to any Tim Hortons owners that were offended by that. But it was just something

00:01:33.080 that was meant to bring to the attention that we do have recycling programs in this country.

00:01:37.220 We do need to actually expand those. We have the brightest minds in the country here, the brightest

00:01:42.980 engineers. We have companies who are already working on recycling plastics and actually expanding

00:01:49.400 the recycling programs. But instead, the NDP Liberal government doesn't want to give them credit,

00:01:54.040 doesn't want to help expand recycling programs in Canada. So they're asking for alternatives. And what I

00:02:00.520 was trying to say is there is a place and a time for plastic and there's a place and a time for

00:02:05.720 compostable items. And when we talk about our food supply system, this is not the place to start with a

00:02:11.560 plastics ban on fresh fruit and vegetables. Well, I think this dovetails nicely into the topic today, which is

00:02:17.800 just general of unaffordability across Canada. This Liberal government has come up with one policy after

00:02:23.640 another. They've added on so much debt. The interest payments are more than we transfer to the provinces

00:02:29.320 for health care. Pretty much every cent we collect in the HST, the GST, the federal portion goes to pay

00:02:35.480 interest on our debt. That is actually burdening future generations worse. It's the invisible

00:02:41.000 side that people don't necessarily see in their day-to-day lives. Absolutely. And, you know, being

00:02:47.080 home the last couple of weeks and with my constituents and talking with young people, they're really feeling

00:02:51.960 hopeless right now. They're feeling that they are never going to have the opportunities that their

00:02:56.200 parents had or their grandparents had for a better life. They aren't even dreaming of owning a home

00:03:01.480 anymore. They're just dreaming of finding a way to make enough money at their jobs. And some of them have

00:03:06.840 very good paying jobs in the trades so they can move out of their parents' basement and find something

00:03:10.760 to rent. And it's a very sad situation that we see our country in right now with people struggling,

00:03:16.440 struggling to afford food. That's one of the biggest complaints that I hear across the board,

00:03:20.840 whether it's seniors, folks who are on disability, single moms and single parent families. They're

00:03:27.640 struggling to put food on the table right now while working full-time and struggling to keep that roof over

00:03:33.000 their head. We have a few clips that we're going to get to momentarily, but this is the thinking of

00:03:39.400 this liberal NDP government, right? It is people are struggling because of the pain caused by government,

00:03:46.520 okay? All of this is created by government. So some people like the liberals just want to start from

00:03:53.240 here's the start line, right? People are suffering, they're miserable. But you got to rewind the clock a 0.94

00:03:58.360 bit to figure out how we got here so we don't keep making the same mistakes. The problem the

00:04:02.600 liberals are doing is it's one program to fix the problem that was created by them, right? Like

00:04:09.080 the solution to one failed government program is another government program and we'll just keep

00:04:12.920 going on and on and on. The issue being that it will never work, but more so that any cost

00:04:19.800 bared on any new program is on the credit card. Exactly. And one prime example of that is,

00:04:25.240 for instance, the carbon tax. The carbon tax is making everything more expensive, especially when we

00:04:29.080 talk about food for Canadians. The cost to grow the food becomes more because farmers aren't just using

00:04:35.240 tractors to haul wagons and things around anymore. And yes, they are exempt from some taxes when they

00:04:42.200 pay for that fuel. They're using transport trucks now because of the volume that they're moving around

00:04:47.080 and they're paying the carbon tax on that. So when the farmer costs more to grow the food, and if you

00:04:51.640 think about all of the steps in the supply chain to get even the packaging for that food to the farm,

00:04:57.080 everybody's paying more. And eventually the consumer is going to have to pay more at the grocery store

00:05:01.640 because of that tax. And that's just one example of making food unaffordable for Canadians and making

00:05:07.480 not just food, but everything else more unaffordable. Heating your home. If you have a natural gas

00:05:12.120 furnace, like a lot of people in our rural areas and up in the north are using to heat in the cold,

00:05:18.040 it's costing more and more and more money because of failed NDP liberal policies that are not doing

00:05:23.000 anything to actually help the environment or bring down our emissions right now.

00:05:26.680 Let's queue up cut one. This is a news report that talks about the ongoing unaffordability crisis.

00:05:32.920 The affordability crisis, actually. Everything is unaffordable now thanks to this government,

00:05:37.480 but this just paints the picture and then we'll get into a bit more. Play cut one.

00:05:41.240 According to Foodbanks Canada, one in four Canadians are experiencing food insecurity,

00:05:46.360 while nearly half of those surveyed feel they are doing worse financially than they were a year ago.

00:05:51.720 Foodbanks Canada released its annual poverty report card, a look at the challenges facing

00:05:56.520 Canadians and how well governments are responding to them. Most provincial governments received grades

00:06:02.040 in the D range, while seven out of ten got a D minus for what the report called an insufficient

00:06:07.400 approach to poverty reduction. So we have an estimated 20, sorry, two million visits to the

00:06:14.360 food bank in March of the last year. Last year, two million visits. It's a 32% increase over 2022 and

00:06:21.960 that was March 2023. According to Foodbanks Canada, this is extremely concerning when you look at the

00:06:29.160 number of people who are going to a food bank for the first time, like to cross that threshold to the

00:06:34.360 point where just a few years ago you were living a normal life, right? You were able to pay your bills,

00:06:41.720 you don't get your groceries, heck, maybe even take a vacation if you were so lucky. But now it's come

00:06:47.400 to the point where just regular, normal working folks are going to the food bank or making that

00:06:53.800 decision that they need help. Absolutely, and that's because the cost of everything else is

00:06:57.960 so expensive as well. And the food bank is somewhere they can go for help when they need to buy food. But

00:07:03.640 unfortunately, what we're going to see going forward in the future under this NDP Liberal government

00:07:07.960 is food's going to actually increase, especially fresh food. We've heard from the produce growers,

00:07:12.280 they had an independent study done actually on the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables,

00:07:17.560 and if the NDP Liberal government goes ahead with the plastics ban for produce,

00:07:21.480 we're going to see a potentially increase in fresh food by another 34%. We're also going to see a 50%

00:07:28.520 increase in food waste, a 50% increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and it's going to cost the economy and

00:07:35.480 and our provinces over a billion dollars a year in increased health care costs because

00:07:40.120 people can't afford the fresh food that they need for nourishment. And this is just another

00:07:46.120 failed policy, and it just has so many repercussions down the line that we won't see for potentially

00:07:51.880 years. But it adds to the unaffordability crisis that we have in this country right now.

00:07:57.240 And instead of the Liberals rethinking their plans, it'll be another government program,

00:08:01.720 I have no doubt. Exactly, and we've seen that with the National School Food Lunch Program. That's

00:08:07.720 another example. Parents can't afford to feed their kids at home, so the government needs to create a

00:08:11.800 program to help feed the kids at school because parents aren't affording food for their kids.

00:08:16.440 It's fixing another broken government program with another broken government program.

00:08:21.400 Yeah, whereas if you just rewound a bit and actually look at your policies that put us in this

00:08:26.840 spot we're in now, you might be able to reverse that, then allow people to have more money in

00:08:32.760 their pockets to do what they do best, which is spend it on their priorities. It's that simple.

00:08:37.000 Absolutely, very simple. Common sense. It is common sense. All right, we're going to queue up cut two

00:08:42.280 here because we've got our leader Pierre Polyev asking for a bit of relief, passing a bill that's

00:08:47.640 in the Senate now that will give farmers some relief, which will hopefully then lower some prices. 0.53

00:08:52.360 We have lineups at our food banks that if you put the images in black and white you would just assume

00:08:58.280 you were looking at images from the Great Depression.

00:09:08.520 There's a common sense conservative bill, C234, that is passed to the Senate. The prime minister's

00:09:14.840 ministers are panicking and begging senators to block it. Will the prime minister tell

00:09:22.280 his senators that they have go ahead to pass this common sense conservative bill so our farmers

00:09:28.360 can feed our people. It's amazing that pretty much every government provincially across this country

00:09:36.120 are looking at ways of giving people a break, reducing taxes. Even the NDP government in Manitoba

00:09:44.120 released some of the tax and pulled back some of their provincial taxes to give

00:09:47.960 people a bit of a break that we're suffering. Every government except this federal government.

00:09:53.640 Absolutely. And C234 is a bill that's meant to help farmers again reduce the costs that it

00:09:59.640 cost them to produce food for Canadians. And if we don't find ways to reduce costs for farmers,

00:10:05.960 if we don't find ways to keep farmers in business, we're going to have a shortage of farmers growing

00:10:10.680 fresh food in this country. And it's going to actually contribute more to food insecurity 0.56

00:10:14.760 because we do import two thirds of our fresh food into the country already. And without our farmers,

00:10:19.880 we don't have the food that we want and what we need to feed Canadians and the world. So this is one

00:10:25.480 common sense bill that will help farmers reduce the input costs, reduce the costs to consumers for what

00:10:31.960 they pay for their food. But if people start relying on their own systems, right, their own ability to

00:10:37.960 provide for their families and their friends and maybe some charity, then the Liberal politicians don't have

00:10:44.280 an avenue to go to the public to say, hey, we can fix this problem. Again, starting the history right

00:10:50.120 at that moment, forgetting about how they actually got here. And this is this is the unfortunate part

00:10:55.080 that the Liberals have figured out that they can keep going to the polls to say we'll fix that problem.

00:11:00.280 But again, no, there's been a lack of accountability, I think, on the past on how we actually got here.

00:11:07.640 Absolutely. And if we look at the statistics, the statistics tell us right now,

00:11:11.480 our national food insecurity rate is nearly 23 percent in this country. And I can tell you,

00:11:16.360 it wasn't that nine years before before we had Trudeau as the prime minister and the NDP Liberal

00:11:21.560 government. We see a third of Canadians are experiencing inadequate standard of living.

00:11:27.240 And even more people are saying that it's actually more than inadequate standard of living. But again,

00:11:31.640 it goes back to the NDP Liberal policies that have created the mess that this country is in,

00:11:36.440 making everything completely unaffordable.

00:11:38.280 It's also called the Teitler cycle. Lord Alexander Teitler, a Scottish politician,

00:11:43.000 back in the day, talked about this, how politicians can then create the problem

00:11:48.120 and go to their constituents at election time to say, hey, we will fix the problem.

00:11:52.360 Right. So it's the easiest thing to do for the government to get the heck out of the way

00:11:57.160 and allow people to do what they do best. Exactly. And actually, one more thing to add to that too is

00:12:02.200 three years ago, we started talking about a grocery code of conduct. And I started talking about that

00:12:08.040 in the House of Commons and industry got together. We've gotten all the provinces together working

00:12:11.960 on this code of conduct. And right now we're waiting for Walmart. Walmart is one of the big five

00:12:16.920 grocers that has not signed on to the code of conduct yet. And what that code of conduct is going to

00:12:21.080 do is actually help farmers get paid properly for the goods that they are supplying to the grocery

00:12:26.920 stores. Because again, it all ties back. If we can make it less expensive for farmers to produce the

00:12:32.840 food, then it will cost consumers less. But the grocery chains for years and years have been

00:12:37.880 charging farmers fees and fines and making it so expensive that they're hardly getting any money back

00:12:43.080 for the goods that they're selling grocery stores. And that's what this code of conduct is going to do.

00:12:47.240 Make sure small suppliers, farmers get paid adequately by these chain stores that hold

00:12:51.720 this oligopoly of control over the grocery business in Canada. And so we need to get Walmart to sign

00:12:58.680 on to this. Loblaws last week finally said that they would sign on to the code. So if we can get Walmart

00:13:03.400 onto the code and we get Costco onto the code, then we'll see farmers actually get paid better for

00:13:08.760 the goods that they're selling to the grocery stores. What was Walmart's excuse? Why won't they sign?

00:13:13.400 Well, you know, we're not sure. They think that a code is a good idea, but we're not sure at this

00:13:18.200 point why they're not wanting to sign. So we need to see them get on board with this, treat our farmers

00:13:23.880 fairly. Let's make sure that we keep our farmers in business in this country to feed Canadians and

00:13:29.000 keep prices low for Canadians. I think most Canadians know that a lot of our farmers are aging out,

00:13:33.720 right? They're either getting to the point where they're not able to continue. The issue has been going

00:13:37.800 on for a few decades now, but actually reaching a tipping point now because of the situation we're

00:13:44.120 in now. In order to attract farmers or anybody to a specific field, there has to be a hope of seeing

00:13:52.600 return, making a living, right? And agriculture has been just punished just relentlessly by governments

00:14:00.760 over the years, right? More rules, more regulation, more red tape, making it harder for them to actually

00:14:05.720 do what they do best, which is grow our food, make our food. And it's become more unattractive

00:14:11.160 for the younger generation because who wants to break your back seven days a week

00:14:16.200 and then still struggle to make a living yourself? Well, you nailed it. I often say farmers are the

00:14:22.040 biggest gamblers that there are out there because they rely on Mother Nature to provide them with the

00:14:27.240 right growing conditions, the right weather, the right heat. And then they have to deal with the

00:14:32.600 bureaucracy of the government and impeding them from actually doing their job. At every turn,

00:14:37.400 there's more paperwork and more paperwork to fill out now instead of just getting out of the way.

00:14:41.880 Government needs to get out of the way. Yes, we have to have controls in place to make it so that we are

00:14:46.520 regulated and we have some of the highest standards in the world. But farmers need to be able to actually

00:14:50.920 go to the fields and grow and not spend their time doing book work in an office to meet some government

00:14:55.960 bureaucrats request over paperwork that needs to be done. But again, farmers are facing an uphill battle

00:15:03.800 right now, especially with the, like you said, older generations are phasing out there and nobody

00:15:09.320 wants to get into business. That's the reality. Very few people want to get in this business. It's

00:15:13.240 a lifestyle. It's a choice. And the farmers that do it and the farm families are the backbone of our

00:15:19.400 economy. And we can't thank them enough for everything that they do to grow food for us,

00:15:23.320 breaking their backs out there seven days a week, making sure that we can be fed here in Canada.

00:15:28.280 Well, I think this sounds harsh, but I think the reality in this country is at this moment under this

00:15:35.480 NDP Liberal government is that it is more profitable to be a regulator than it is to actually do the

00:15:42.840 farming, right? And when we get to the point where you're making more money or you have more

00:15:48.760 advantages as a bureaucrat regulating the industry than you do actually providing the food for people

00:15:54.120 to buy, that's a very dangerous place to be, in my opinion, because you don't have the people

00:16:01.720 actually providing the food. So you're relying on imports again. And if we learned anything during

00:16:07.240 the pandemic, that's an awful place to be. Absolutely. And during the pandemic, we saw

00:16:13.480 even in our neighbors to the US. So Canada has a very short growing season. Yes, we have some

00:16:18.120 greenhouses that can grow year round, but that's mostly tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers. But what we

00:16:24.360 saw was a labor shortage during the pandemic in the States where they couldn't get the crops off

00:16:28.120 because they didn't have the labor to do so, which meant that we didn't get the imports that we rely on.

00:16:33.480 And the reality is that, you know, when we were kids, we used to go to the grocery store in the

00:16:37.560 winter. You didn't actually get to find things on a shelf like you do year round right now. I

00:16:42.520 remember having to wait for somebody to come back from Florida to bring citrus when it was in season

00:16:47.160 in Florida because you just didn't get it. But now the way our supply chains are set up, the way we have

00:16:52.520 a global system where we are reliant on food coming from all over the world, including on passenger

00:16:58.680 airplanes as cargo. And ships coming from South Africa, from the Middle East, if you can believe

00:17:05.080 it, from South America, that's where we actually get most of our food from. And the reality is we

00:17:11.560 can't grow it all here year round. So if consumers want to see what they see and are used to having

00:17:16.600 all the fruits and vegetables on the shelves of the grocery store year round, we have to find a way

00:17:21.240 and a balance to keep our farmers farming here in Canada, but also to have policies that allow us

00:17:26.760 to have these imports into the country. And the plastics ban that the NDP liberal government

00:17:31.160 wants on these fresh fruit and vegetables, that's actually going to impede all of those imports that 0.63

00:17:35.800 we get. Ninety percent of what plastic does for food to keep it fresh is done before it ever hits

00:17:41.240 the grocery store shelf. And we have lots of rural and northern remote communities that rely on fresh

00:17:46.760 food to be either trucked in. If you're in the Yukon, you're fortunate enough to have it trucked in.

00:17:51.000 If you're in the Northwest Territories or in Nunavut, you're having it flown in. That shelf life has to be

00:17:56.120 extended or they're going to maybe get one or two days out of, for instance, a cucumber. When you

00:18:01.000 wrap it in plastic and the advances in technology that industry has done by innovating the packaging

00:18:07.560 specific to reduce food waste, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to be able to extend the shelf

00:18:13.320 life of fresh berries or fresh food, they should be applauded, not be over-regulated and told we can't

00:18:20.440 have that anymore. Because again, it will increase our food waste by 50 percent and increase our 0.89

00:18:25.400 greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention that plastic weighs less than paper. So when we're

00:18:29.960 talking about paper packaging, a paper bag versus plastic, it's almost four to one in the weight

00:18:36.200 and the volume that it takes up in transport trucks to transport it across the country as well.

00:18:40.440 And we're not a small country, Jamie. We've got a lot of geography, a lot of miles to cover.

00:18:44.040 But when you have shortages, food or otherwise, it spikes the price, right? Abundance equals peace.

00:18:49.400 I always keep saying, shortage equals conflict. And if you're spiking the price of certain types

00:18:53.800 of food, only the well-to-do will be able to afford that food while the rest of us suffer.

00:18:58.200 Big government loves that, right? You bring everyone else down. It's the plan. It's the path that we seem

00:19:03.800 to be going on with this Liberal NDP government. Anyway, we're way out of time, way over. As you know,

00:19:08.440 the guests get the last word. The floor is yours. Well, thank you so much, Jamie. I just want to say once again,

00:19:13.240 thank you to the farmers out there who are working tirelessly to try to get your crops in the ground

00:19:17.320 right now at this time of year, so we can have a bountiful harvest come summer and fall, and we can

00:19:22.920 keep Canadians fed and nutritious with healthy, affordable food. All right, Leanne Rue, thank you

00:19:27.480 very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule. I appreciate you talking about your work

00:19:31.720 with agriculture and ensuring we have a strong food supply here in Canada. Thank you so much. All right,

00:19:36.920 Lampton Kent Middlesex is at Riding. We thank her for her time. For yours as well, don't forget to like,

00:19:41.560 comment, subscribe, and share this program. New content for you every single Tuesday,

00:19:45.800 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Until next week, remember, low taxes, less government,

00:19:49.400 more freedom. That's the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - May 29, 2024

Canada is going hungry.

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