1) Freeland announces plan to cap grocery profits, expand competition

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Canadian Press Staff, February 11, 2025

Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland has pitched a plan to lower food prices, tackling a key part of the cost-of-living issue that plagued her for much of her time as minister of finance.

Her affordability plan includes a promise to cap profit margins for grocers on essential items, including eggs, milk, vegetables and baby formula.

She’s also promising to outlaw “shrinkflation” — the practice of making containers slightly smaller so consumers barely notice they’re paying the same for less — and to overhaul the Competition Bureau to “end deceptive behaviour and impose zero-tolerance for bad actors.”

“My government will use tax dollars responsibly. I will pay for these measures by reducing the cost of running government — without cutting the benefits and services Canadians count on,” Freeland said in an email detailing her plan.

“This means cutting red tape, streamlining how government does business, and leveraging new digital and AI tools to deliver benefits and services to Canadians, faster and better.”

Freeland is one of five people running to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said last month he will resign as soon as a new leader is elected.

Former central banker Mark Carney, MP Karina Gould and former MPs Frank Baylis and Ruby Dhalla are still in the running for the Liberals’ top job. The vote is scheduled for March 9.

Rising food prices have been a major cause of anxiety and hardship for Canadians over the last four years. Annual tracking by four universities published in Canada’s Food Price Report shows costs rose almost five per cent in 2021, more than 10 per cent on average in 2022, almost six per cent in 2023 and nearly three per cent in 2024.

Statistics Canada has reported a significant increase in the number of Canadians living in what it calls “food insecure” households — from about 6.1 million people in 2019 to almost 8.7 million people in 2023.

The Liberals have pushed national grocers to sign a code of conduct to help lower prices but have resisted the NDP’s calls for price caps.

Freeland said more than once in 2023 that Canada’s grocery industry needs more competition, but efforts by her former cabinet colleagues to make that happen have failed to add new retailers to the system.

Freeland’s email said she will improve competition by banning grocers from also owning wholesalers, processors and distributors.

She also promised low-cost financing to attract new independent grocers and to consider allowing foreign grocers into the market — with the exception of American grocery chains.

Freeland is also proposing to build 100,000 more $10-a-day child care spaces by “requiring new or renovated federal office buildings” to provide them. She said a government led by her would offer “new or renovated space in federal buildings to non-profit providers free of charge, and (lower) existing rents for non-profit providers to zero dollars within sixty days.”

“I will cut taxes for the middle class, including for Canadians buying that first home. And I will cut the costs of credit card debt, groceries, and child care for all Canadians,” Freeland said.

2) Liberal leadership debates to take place later this month

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Catherine Morrison, Feb. 9, 2025

A Liberal Party of Canada logo is shown on a giant screen as a technician looks on during day one of the party’s biennial convention in Montreal on Feb. 20, 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

The Liberal Party of Canada says it will hold two leadership debates later this month.

The party says a French debate is scheduled for Feb. 24 and an English debate is scheduled for Feb. 25, with both events to take place in Montreal, Que. 

Former finance minister and Liberal leadership hopeful Chrystia Freeland had called for four  debates.

In an open letter last month to the other candidates, Freeland said that the debates, two in each official language, should be held as soon as possible.

The party will elect its next leader on March 9. 

The field currently consists of Freeland, former central banker Mark Carney, Liberal MP Karina Gould and former Liberal MPs Frank Baylis and Ruby Dhalla. 

On Jan. 31, Gould also called for a debate in the short-term, while on Saturday morning Dhalla said it was time for a debate. 

The party reported a week ago that nearly 400,000 supporters registered as members to vote in the leadership race before the deadline.

The candidates will have to come up with a final payment of $125,000 by Feb. 17 as part of a total entry fee of $350,000 – With files from Michel Saba and Kyle Duggan. 

3) Small businesses still being taxed on carbon rebates, federation says

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Catherine Morrison, Feb. 8, 2025

Small businesses across Canada are still being taxed on their carbon tax rebates despite a commitment from the former finance minister that they would be tax-free, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).

The business group says it has been informed by the Canada Revenue Agency that the rebate is considered government assistance to taxpayers and that it’s subject to income tax.

The federation says the CRA also told it that former finance minister Chrystia Freeland’s announcement last year that the rebate will be tax free, and the fall economic statement that made a similar commitment, “were not accompanied by proposed legislative amendments.”

The prorogation of Parliament is not making the situation any easier, says CFIB president and CEO Dan Kelly, as only new legislation presented in Parliament can override this decision.

“It’s just the most unhelpful time to provide even more tax uncertainty at a time when businesses are scrambling to deal with the potential tariff issue, and so that makes this doubly bad,” Kelly said.

Businesses had finally received clarity on the capital gains front, with the inclusion rate increase being pushed back, only to have confusion about the carbon tax rebate come up after five years of waiting for it to kick in, said Kelly. 

“It really has eroded a lot of trust over the carbon tax,” said Kelly, who previously told The Canadian Press that 83 per cent of the group’s 97,000 members want the carbon price to be repealed.

The Canada carbon rebate for small businesses was a measure introduced in Budget 2024, in which $2.5 billion of carbon price revenue would be paid back to some 600,000 small- and medium-sized businesses. In October, the finance department said the government planned to return a portion of the fuel charge proceeds from 2019-20 through 2023-24 to businesses by the end of the year. 

After confusion over whether or not the rebate would be taxed and years of delays, the CFIB says rebates were paid in December.

“The consumers had their rebate as soon as the carbon tax went into place in 2019 but it took Ottawa five straight years to figure out how to rebate these dollars back to the businesses that they had promised them to,” Kelly said. “Even now, after the checks have been sent out, it is taxable according to the CRA, government will have to retroactively change legislation if they want to remove the tax from this.”

The CFIB, Canada’s largest association of small and medium-sized businesses, is calling for Parliament to be reconvened to pass legislation to make the rebate tax free. It also wants the government to freeze a 19 per cent increase in the carbon tax planned for April 1 and return the small business rebate formula to nine per cent of total revenue as long as the carbon tax is in place.

Kelly said a major concern is that businesses don’t know the rules around the rebate. 

“There are businesses that will be filing their income taxes incorrectly right now because they’ve received this carbon tax rebate and the only official word from government is that it’s tax free, but CRA has confirmed to us in writing that it’s not tax free unless the government changes the rules,” Kelly said. “The tax impact could be significant when you add federal and provincial corporate income taxes to this amount.”

“If the government is collecting corporate income tax on the carbon tax rebate checks, well then it’s hardly revenue neutral,” he said.

The Canadian Press has requested comment from the CRA and the office of Minister of Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc.

– With files from Nick Murray. 

4) Small businesses still being taxed on carbon rebates, federation says; ‘Should I just laugh?’: Energy experts question Freeland’s pledge to push LNG

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Kyle Duggan, Feb. 8 2025

Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland’s pitch to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to allies is drawing skeptical reactions from those who say her government neglected the sector over the past decade.

The former finance minister’s policy statement on jobs and growth, released on Feb. 5, includes a pledge to “seize the opportunity to make Canada an energy superpower, from powering our grids with hydro to exporting liquefied natural gas to our allies.”

That line is part of a package of proposals Freeland made to diversify Canada’s exports in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on those exports.

But critics — even those who agree with her ideas for LNG — found it to be a tough line to swallow.

“Should I just laugh?” said Martha Hall Findlay, director of the University of Calgary’s school of public policy. “It would be funny if it weren’t just so frustrating.”

Hall Findlay said Freeland was a central figure in the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for nearly a decade, as it “did everything it could possibly do to limit our ability to export energy.”

The Trudeau government shelved the Northern Gateway pipeline project in 2016. It also passed Bill C-48 in 2019, which prohibited tankers off the northwest coast of British Columbia.

Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation, said Ottawa’s track record over the past decade has “not at all been friendly to the development of natural resources” and that “nobody was speaking up for the oil and gas industry.”

“They’re the right things to do,” he said of Freeland’s energy policy proposals. “The question is whether she has credibility to say these things.”

Freeland’s campaign defends that she pushed for the Trans Mountain Expansion project amid concerns it was expensive and difficult.

“Chrystia Freeland’s track record is indisputable,” said spokesperson Katherine Cuplinskas. “She delivers on getting Canadian resources to market while ensuring the highest environmental standards are met.”

Along with Freeland getting the roughly $34 billion Trans Mountain Expansion finished, Cuplinskas also pointed to the Canada Growth Fund as well as investment tax credits for carbon capture, utilization, and storage as evidence of her investments in energy. 

Her Liberal government also purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2018, which saved it.

John Manley, once a heavyweight blue Liberal who now describes himself as “post-partisan,” summed up his reaction to Freeland’s policy proposal in two words: “Totally agree.”

But Hall Findlay, a former Liberal party leadership contestant herself who later left and backed centrist Conservative party contenders, noted the absence of any mention of oil in Freeland’s platform.

She suggested Freeland’s strategy here is to try to “please the environmental keep-it-in-the-grounders, the anti-oil people in the Liberal party, but also trying to sound like she wants to do the right thing for the economy.”

“She’s trying to play both sides by saying, ‘Well, we’ll look at expanding the friendlier fossil fuel … but we’ll avoid mentioning the one that really is the fundamental economic driver,'” Hall Findlay said. “She’s trying to please everybody and I just don’t think that pleases anybody.

“Canada’s been spending an awful lot of time shooting itself in the foot so that a few people in Ottawa can pat themselves on the back, and unfortunately Chrystia Freeland’s one of them.”

But UBC politics professor Kathryn Harrison, who specializes in environment and energy policy and is a member of the B.C. Climate Solutions Council, said Freeland’s platform here is consistent with the Trudeau government’s track record.

“The emphasis on exporting LNG is not inconsistent with the Trudeau government’s track record in that they have approved new LNG terminals during their time in government — LNG Canada, Cedar LNG,” Harrison said.

The federal government also pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into LNG Canada’s complex in Kitimat, B.C.

“It’s a popular line right now,” Harrison added, suggesting it “plays well with voters because gas seems cleaner than oil” and it gives them a sense Canada would be doing the world a favour by helping other countries move away from more emissions-heavy fuels.

“But I think it’s fraught on environmental grounds and economic grounds as well,” she said, adding LNG takes a long time to receive permits and build. She also cited reports suggesting global demand for LNG may peak around 2030.

Environmental groups insist doubling down on LNG would only benefit wealthy Canadians who invest in the fossil fuel industry.

“Whoever wants to be Canada’s next prime minister must focus on solutions that will bring Canadians economic relief, and certainty without jeopardizing climate security,” said Ecojustice lawyer Matt Hulse.