Unlike the turmoil behind their closed doors, Conservative MPs were united Tuesday in the House of Commons where the impact of “Liberal inflation” on “Madame Tremblay’s” grocery store took pride of place on their menu during the question period.
Posted at 5:21 p.m.
On no less than a dozen occasions, members of the Conservative benches rose on the subject, accusing the Liberals in particular of “impoverishing Canadians” when the consumer price index reached 4.8% in December on an annualized basis, inflation not having been so strong in the country in 30 years.
All you do is “vilify the Canadian economy” with “false narratives,” replied Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
“StatsCan today released new data that shows our GDP grew by 0.6% in November and this means that prior to Omicron’s arrival our economy was fully recovered from the COVID recession,” she noted.
During this session, where Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was conspicuously absent, his House leader, Gérard Deltell, who had just launched the charge, then invited Minister Freeland to accompany him to the grocery store to explain to consumers that, “Wow, GDP just went up.
Canada’s “economic potential” is only growing, retorted Minister Freeland, adding that “the IMF recently predicted that Canada will have the second highest growth rate of the G7 countries”.
In this ping-pong game, MP Deltell added that at the “IGA in Gatineau”, the Minister will be able to explain: “Mme Tremblay, don’t worry, the IMF says things are going well in Canada. Because “all the Mmy Tremblay of Canada” pay more for their groceries.
Stung to the quick, the minister said that “it’s not just Mme Tremblay who does the grocery shopping is also Mme Freeland who does it every weekend for my family”.
The Minister insisted that “facts and data are important”. Inflation in Canada is below the G7, G20 and OECD averages, she said.
Conservative MP for Calgary, Michelle Rempel Garner, returned to the charge a few minutes later and protested that a minister who has “an annual salary of $ 270,000” is comparing himself with someone struggling to pay the grocery store.
The Liberals are “out of touch with the average Canadian,” she said in heated exchanges.
According to Statistics Canada, inflation data for December was propelled by grocery prices, which soared 5.7% year over year – their biggest increase in a decade – and those of housing, which increased by 9.3% compared to December 2020.
Gasoline prices at the pump fell month-over-month due to the tightening of public health restrictions related to the spread of the Omicron variant, but they still showed a growth of 33.3% over compared to December 2020.
While the Conservatives redoubled their very concrete examples on Tuesday on the “explosion” of the cost of living, including the case of a mother whose annual grocery bill increase represents “a full payday”, Minister Freeland replied that Canadians understand that “inflation is a global phenomenon”.
“The latest inflation rate in Canada was 4.8%, in the United States 7%, in Germany 5.3%, in the United Kingdom 5.4%, the OECD average is 5.8%, of the G7 5.3% and of the G20 5.8%”, for example listed the Minister.
“That we compare ourselves to any country in the world, it does not give a penny more to this mother there who has difficulty feeding her children”, replied the deputy Luc Berthold.
Two weeks ago, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) suggested in a report to put an end to the economic stimulus measures planned by Ottawa.
The Liberals had promised up to $100 billion in pandemic stimulus, subject to a series of “fiscal safeguards,” but those largely job-market indicators were met, according to the PBO.
The Conservatives tried in vain on Tuesday to find out whether the government will end these measures which would do “exactly the wrong thing” by increasing inflation.