The Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax says the food rebate doesn’t address affordability for Canadians who are struggling.

Known as the Food Professor, Sylvain Charlebois describes it as a cute name for an enhanced GST rebate program.

“A typical family will spend a little more than a thousand bucks on food this year so $467 will help but the issues of food inflation is going to be a lingering problem – this is going to be a one-time payment.”

He says as soon as you have government spending way more money in the economy you could have government creating inflation so the program could make the situation worse for everyone while temporarily helping 11 million people.  Charlebois says the food rebate is just politicizing food inflation and there was no fiscal prudence presented in the budget.

Charlebois did note that the federal alcohol “escalator tax” which automatically increases the tax on beer, wine and spirits every year across the country by the rate of inflation has been reduced. It was set to increase by 6.3 per cent on April 1 and now the increase will be 2 per cent.

The Food Professor also touched on the carbon tax and he is not saying the carbon tax is a bad idea but if Canada is going in that direction, then we need to know exactly how it is impacting the agrifood sector.  He points out that in addition to the fact in America they do not have a carbon tax and Canada imports almost $30 billion in food from the United States.

Charlebois says for the first time he saw a budget that suggests carbon capture sequestration is a good thing for the agri-food sector. He says that is good news for Saskatchewan which has two of four carbon sequestration associated facilities in the country. The other two are in Alberta. The federal budget dedicates $520 million for carbon capture projects.