Ontario party leaders share plans to address the rising cost of food ahead of the election
Horwath said the NDP would also create a provincial food strategy that involves working with farmers to improve access to locally-sourced food while also supporting agriculture jobs.
Three of Ontario’s four major political parties are promising to take steps to lower the price of food, but an expert says some of the main factors leading to rising costs are out of the province’s hands.
The issue of affordability has been top of mind for Ontarians throughout the election campaign, especially as more residents feel the pinch when purchasing produce and grocery staples.
Statistics Canada reported earlier this month that overall food costs rose 8.8 per cent compared with a year ago, while Canadians paid 9.7 per cent more for food at stores in April, the largest increase since September 1981.
The NDP, Liberals and Greens are all offering targeted plans for tackling rising food prices, while the Progressive Conservatives say they will keep costs down and help residents save money through different measures like lowering gas taxes.
Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca said he’s seen firsthand how the price of food has “skyrocketed,” which makes it “so much more difficult” for Ontario households to be able to budget and support themselves.
If elected, he said his party would remove the 8 per cent provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax on all prepared food items under $20. The party has said it would fund the measure by introducing a one per cent surtax on companies operating in Ontario whose profits exceed $1 billion a year and increasing taxes on individual incomes over $500,000.
But Mike von Massow, an associate professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Guelph, said the plan wouldn’t provide “broad based relief” since only a “small segment” of food products under $20 are currently taxed in the province.
The NDP and Greens have made pledges to back the Grocery Code of Conduct to improve transparency in the industry.
“We need to make sure that when when we have retailers of food, particularly the big chains, that they’re not colluding to keep prices high, because it hurts consumers,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said on May 29 during a campaign stop in Essex, Ont.
Von Massow said this could be a “very good thing in terms of controlling the market power of some of these big grocers,” but it wouldn’t necessarily lower grocery prices since a similar code of conduct introduced in Australia did not have that effect.
Horwath said the NDP would also create a provincial food strategy that involves working with farmers to improve access to locally-sourced food while also supporting agriculture jobs.
The Greens, meanwhile, are promising to provide start-up funding and land for community-owned healthy food markets, community gardens and rooftop growing spaces, as well as a nutritious school lunch program for the public school system.
They also say they would invest in research and innovation that improves the sustainability of how the province grows, produces and distributes food.
Cost-saving measures proposed by the Progressive Conservatives, who are seeking re-election, include lowering the gas tax by 5.7 cents per litre, expanding the CARE tax credit for low-income Ontarians and delivering $10 per day child-care by 2025.
Despite the various campaign promises, von Massow said some of the root causes driving up food prices are out of provincial control, citing extreme weather events and the war in Ukraine as examples.
There are also ongoing supply chain disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic that have driven food prices up, von Massow noted.
