Madam Speaker, as always, it is an honour to stand in this place to debate the issues that are so important to Canadians.

Since we are talking about an issue that deals with education, and I will get to the substance of the bill in a moment, I want to give a shout-out to a young lady from B.C. whose name is Abigail. I had a chance to have a visit with her in the hallway prior to coming into this debate, and she informed me that she plans to be Canada's second female prime minister. I send a big shout-out to Abigail, a very bright young lady in elementary school. It just speaks to the incredible potential that exists across this country in our young people.

We are talking about one of the fundamental issues our country is facing, which is the affordability of food. There are three things I hope to be able to address in the short time I have here before us. The first is that, when it comes to the idea of a school lunch program, the idea of this sort of thing sounds great. However, as with many things that get talked about in the nation's capital, studies, reports and frameworks in this case do not feed kids.

I will start by emphasizing something because our country needs real action to ensure we can address the affordability crisis so many are facing. It is leading to kids going to school hungry and families making difficult decisions about whether to pay for rent, home heating or groceries. The first point I would like to make in this debate tonight is that food has become unaffordable for so many in our country, and it should not be that way.

Let me emphasize how fundamentally advantaged Canada is when it comes to being a producer of high-quality food products. We have the space, the capacity, the expertise and the experience to produce the world-class, quality food people need not only here in our own country but also around the world. Certainly it is a travesty that we are seeing approximately two million visits to food banks per month in our country when we have been blessed with such incredible capacity here at home. It is truly a tragedy.

We see the underlying causes of that. The fact that we have to talk about some of the issues surrounding kids going to school hungry is absolutely tragic. However, we have before us a very simple step in the right direction. It is a bill, currently sitting in the Senate, that would address some of the challenges, and it is the common-sense Conservative bill, Bill C-234, which would remove the carbon tax on all types of farm fuels and home heating. It would allow for the price of food to be brought down in our country. It would ultimately help families, our people from coast to coast to coast, because of course our north is deeply affected by the price of food, yet the bill is unfortunately being stalled.

We have to ensure that folks are able to have prosperous jobs, so we can address some of the challenges we are talking about. It has been raised several times in the debate tonight, and it is fundamentally important. In the short time I have, I will get into some of the jurisdictional challenges momentarily, but we have to acknowledge how important it is to ensure our society functions well, for civil society begins to deteriorate when people cannot afford food. The actions of left-leaning ideologies are directly forcing prices in this country to rise, and that is truly a travesty.

As a fifth-generation farmer of on my family's farm in Alberta's special areas, I was discouraged today by the fact that the Prime Minister did not offer support for farmers but said he will meet with them to tell them how they should or should not do their business. Truly, it is that attitude that farmers do not need. Left-leaning ideologies need to get out of the way to let farmers grow crops and raise livestock to ensure we have that high-quality food.

The second point I will make in the short time I have is that this bill is actually an admission of Liberal failure. In two of their election platforms, I believe in 2015 and 2021, the Liberals promised to have a national lunch program, yet they were unable to fulfill that. This is an admission of that failure. I would—

Damien Kurek

$606,673.00