... as has often been said:
There’s no doubt that Canadians struggled with food prices in 2023. Facing elevated costs, people spent less on groceries and at restaurants this year, highlights Canada’s Food Price Report 2024, conducted annually by four universities from coast to coast.
Retail sales data suggests that Canadians either compromised on the quantity or quality of the food they bought and ate less or slashed waste. According to the report, changing shopping habits meant a family of four cut their food spending by $693 in 2023.
Contending with rising rent and utilities costs and mounting debt, Canadians responded by trading down, shopping at different stores and buying cheaper brands, says Sylvain Charlebois, project lead and director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. “Shelter costs have hit a lot of Canadians quite hard this year, which prevented them from spending the money they wanted to spend at the grocery store.”
In March alone, 1.9 million people visited a food bank somewhere in Canada, marking the highest increase on record, according to the Food Banks Canada HungerCount 2023 report. Visits were up 32 per cent compared to March 2022 and 78.5 per cent compared to March 2019.
“It’s been a really rough year for Canadians,” says Charlebois. “The fact that people were spending less for a while on food is just not something we were expecting.”
**
A typical family of four will spend $16,297 on groceries next year, says a national Food Price Report by analysts at four universities. One co-author has recommended Parliament enact a food stamp program for Canadians who can’t afford fresh fruit and vegetables: “Such a program could be meticulously targeted to provide essential grocery store assistance to those in dire need.”
**
I don't want to be "that guy" about it but you DID vote Liberal, so ... :
The North Grove in Dartmouth, N.S., is a non-profit organization that helps families. Volunteer and patron Vel Oakes says she doesn’t go to the grocery store that much because “the prices are shocking these days.”
“Peanut butter has gone astronomically out of sight. Pasta that used to be 99 cents for a 900-gram bag is now $2.29 for an 800-gram bag,” she says.
Oakes says she buys a lot less meat than she used to and relies on The North Grove’s community meals to get her servings of protein and vegetables.
“Between July and October this year, the number of meals that we served here increased by 50 per cent,” says Laura Horn, the organization’s director of programs and services. She says they serve roughly 300 meals a week.
**
Immigration Minister Marc Miller yesterday extended regulations allowing a half-million foreign students to work full time hours in Canada, telling reporters: “It was popular.” Figures show the unemployment rate for Canadians grew after the rules were changed: “I don’t think students are taking jobs away from other people.”
A plan to double the amount of money international students must prove they have before studying in Canada could have an effect on enrolment, students say.
Jaskaran Singh, an international student from India studying at St. Clair College, agrees with the federal government's move.
Though it won't affect him personally, he says plans to boost the requirement from $10,000 to $20,635 will result in less interest from students — which he sees as a good thing for his home state of Punjab.
"The less they come here, the less they will struggle," he said.
How sage Marc is!
Also:
The dream of making it big in Canada is turning into a battle for survival for many immigrants due to the high cost of living and rental shortages, as rising emigration numbers hint at newcomers being forced to turn their back on a country that they chose to make their adopted home.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made immigration his main weapon to blunt Canada's big challenge of an aging and slowing population, and it has also helped fuel economic growth. That drove Canada's population up at its fastest clip in more than six decades this year, Statistics Canada said.
But now a reversal of that trend is gradually taking hold. In the first six months of 2023 some 42,000 individuals departed Canada, adding to 93,818 people who left in 2022 and 85,927 exits in 2021, official data show.
The rate of immigrants leaving Canada hit a two-decade high in 2019, according to a recent report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), an immigration advocacy group. While the numbers went down during pandemic lockdowns, Statistics Canada data shows it is once again rising.
While that is a fraction of the 263,000 who came to the country over the same period, a steady rise in emigration is making some observers wary.
For a nation built on immigrants, a rising trend of people leaving Canada risks undermining one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau government's signature policies, which granted permanent residency to a record 2.5 million people in just eight years.
**
Free hotel rooms and meals for refugee applicants and illegal immigrants cost $769 million this year, says the Department of Immigration. Lengths of hotel stays ranged “from a few weeks to a few months,” said an official: “Where are you putting these people?”
**
These people are homeless. Homeless. Homeless. Without house and home. Homeless:
At an encampment in St. John's, Nfld., the Social Justice Co-op NL is running an initiative called Tent City For Change. The group calls encampment residents "unhoused protestors." The encampment represents "a political movement," said a volunteer for the organization, Laurel Huget, in a Nov. 29 interview with CBC.
One of the group's Facebook posts regarding the encampment rails against "individuals who are trying to co-opt this movement for their own fascist/political gain," while another speaks of revolution. The group notes that shelter spaces are available but "are not fit," so the encampment has set up in the city's Bannerman Park, which has washrooms and Wi-Fi. Other posts on the group's website show an Antifa flag, calls to "resist capitalism," an initiative to raise funds for an anarchist organization, and rallies for Palestine.
**
Canada has a population of forty million plus illegal migrants:
Cabinet yesterday detailed its timing for promised expansion of a $13 billion dentacare program to subsidize teenagers and seniors. The program would see 9,077,196 more Canadians eligible for subsidies currently paid to 395,000 children under 12: “The intention here is to fill the gaps.”
**
It's probably because giving the Liberals the national wallet was insane to begin with:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the Conservative party has been successful at "scapegoating" the carbon price as the reason everything is more expensive.
Trudeau says in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press that the carbon price is not to blame for the cost-of-living crisis, and eliminating it will neither lower prices nor make climate action cheaper.
He says cancelling it, as the Conservatives are demanding, would also eliminate rebate cheques that are worth between $240 and $386 every three months for a family of four in most provinces.
The federal Liberals have struggled to get their message about carbon pricing across to Canadians, and recent polls suggest support for the policy is fading amid a heavy push from the Conservatives that it is the main cause of inflation.
Justin - he simply cannot help but blame others for HIS failures.
No comments:
Post a Comment