LILLEY: Mark Carney's grocery payment an admission Canada's economy is failing
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Mark Carney visited a Brampton grocery store Friday to celebrate his government’s total failure on affordability.
The Prime Minister was there to promote the first payment of the new Groceries and Essentials Benefit program , essentially, the rejigged GST rebate.
Now, Carney’s supporters may say this is a victory, it is the government helping low income Canadians.
But in my view, when the government has to help its people buy their groceries, then there is a problem. Clearly the economy is not operating as it should if the government needs to send you money for essentials, which is what they are doing.
Although, not everyone is getting this help.
New rebate doesn’t lower food prices or costs for most
To get this help, you need to qualify for the GST rebate, which means an income of $56,181 or less for a single person with no children or $66,841 or less for a couple with two children. Essentially, you need to be living at or just above the poverty line to receive this payment.
About 45% of recipients are either between the ages of 19-24 or over the age of 65, despite these age groups only amounting to just over 25% of the Canadian population.
This is great for those people but that is not where most Canadian families live. The PM is trying to make it sound like he’s helping average families with the cost of groceries.
“We are laser focused on affordability for Canadians, for Canadian families, providing them with a boost today and a bridge to that better tomorrow,” Carney said at a photo-op to mark the new payments.
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Average family not helped by this program
Meanwhile, average families continue to face out-of-control food prices. The basket of groceries that cost you $100 five years ago now costs you $130.
The rise for some individual items, as detailed in the latest inflation report is staggering. Tomatoes up 20.9% compared to a year earlier while coffee is up 15.5%, beef is up 12.5%, carrots are up 10.5%, and pork is up 9.4%.
An average family in Brampton that is dealing with these rising costs won’t be getting this help because they make too much money. The median household income in Brampton is over $110,000, or more than $40,000 above the cut-off, but they are still dealing with higher grocery costs.
“We’re building Canada strong for all,” Carney said.
I wish this were the case, but it’s not.
Canada’s economy sputtering
Canada’s economy is in recession according to Stats Canada data. The PM can claim that it’s only a “technical” recession if he wants, but even he said when he was Governor of the Bank of England that a recession was two quarters of flat or negative growth.
That is where we are now.
Our unemployment rate fell in the numbers released on Friday, but it is still stubbornly high at 6.6%. Bankruptcies have increased by 10% in the latest report compared to a year ago.
Eric Kam, an economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University dismissed the claim that Canada either isn’t in a recession or just a technical recession as fantasy and wordsmithing.
“I don’t want to hear anything more about technical recessions any more than I want to hear someone tell me they’re technically pregnant,” Kam told me in an interview. “The reality is the Canadian economy has been heading in the wrong direction for about eleven years.”
A healthy economy wouldn’t need a government program to help pay for groceries. People would do it themselves with jobs, higher wages and inflation that was manageable.
We don’t have that.
We have an economy that is sputtering, and a government with tired and failing ideas on how to fix that.