Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a multibillion-dollar package as part of a series of measures aimed at lowering the costs of food and other essentials for low-income families.
On Monday, Carney announced a five-year 25 percent boost to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) credit that starts this year.
The GST credit, which is being renamed the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, will provide additional, significant support for more than 12 million Canadians, Carney said in a statement.
The government will also provide a one-time top-up equivalent to a 50 percent increase this year to eligible residents.
“We’re bringing in new measures to lower costs and make sure Canadians have the support they need now,” Carney said.
The measures would cost the government 3.1 billion Canadian dollars ($2.26bn) in the first year and between 1.3 billion Canadian dollars ($950m) and 1.8 billion Canadian dollars ($1.3bn) in each of the following four years, he told reporters at a news conference, according to the Reuters news agency.
While overall consumer price inflation in Canada has eased and came in at 2.4 percent for December, “food price inflation remains high due to global and domestic factors, including supply chain disruptions, higher US tariffs from the trade war and climate change/extreme weather”, Tony Stillo, director of Canada Economics at Oxford Economics, told media.
The government is also setting aside 500 million Canadian dollars ($365m) from the Strategic Response Fund to help businesses address the costs of supply chain disruptions without passing those costs on to Canadians, and will create a 150 million Canadian dollar ($110m) Food Security Fund under the existing Regional Tariff Response Initiative for small and medium enterprises and the organisations that support them.
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