The federal government on Thursday unveiled a $3.2-billion national food security strategy aimed at lowering grocery bills by overhauling how food is grown, processed and sold in Canada.
The multi-year plan, titled “More Choice. More Control. More Canada,” seeks to reduce the country’s dependence on international imports and break the grip of a highly concentrated retail market that officials say has contributed to surging food inflation.
“A country that can’t feed itself or fuel itself or defend itself isn’t truly sovereign. It’s vulnerable to global shocks, it’s vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, vulnerable to tariffs,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said while announcing the strategy in Toronto.
“So to protect our sovereignty and truly take control of our future, we have to take control of our food system.”
A central pillar of the strategy is the creation of a so-called Food-Link Fund, which will see Ottawa provide $1 billion over 10 years to expand the Ontario Food Terminal and build new regional “food hubs” across the country.
Those hubs will then allow independent grocers and local farmers a way to bypass the “Big Five” retail chains that currently control 75 per cent of the Canadian market, according to the plan.
“We are trying to inject some competition, some alternatives,” a government official told reporters during a Thursday morning technical briefing.
“We’re really looking at the structural gaps and the pressures faced by independent grocery stores, different outlets where food can be purchased, restaurants, institutions needing to source food.”
The strategy arrives as Canadians face food prices that have risen 31 per cent since 2020, an issue that has been repeatedly highlighted by opposition Conservatives and putting pressure on the Liberal government to address affordability.
That inflation, the government says in its strategy, is similar to food inflation in other G7 countries and has been caused by domestic and global pressures, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war in the Middle East, which have driven up the cost of fuel and fertilizer.
To address these vulnerabilities, the government is setting a target to increase the domestically produced share of healthy food available to Canadians from 75 per cent to 85 per cent by 2032.
“We are an agricultural superpower,” Carney said. “Yet for most Canadians it doesn’t feel like that at the checkout counter.
“We’re going to grow more at home, process more at home, and feed more Canadians with Canadian food.”
Conservatives and other opposition parties have noted that Canada’s food inflation outpaced the rest of the G7 early this year at 6.2 per cent, despite those countries facing the same global pressures.
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Statistics Canada recently said the figure eased to 3.5 per cent in April — the second-highest rate in the G7 behind the United Kingdom.
“Liberal hidden taxes, including the industrial carbon tax and inflationary spending, drive up the cost of growing, transporting, and buying food, while the weak dollar makes imports pricier,” Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman said in a social media post reacting to Carney’s announcement, which was shared by party leader Pierre Poilievre.
“It’s time to reverse the spending and taxes that drove food prices up and paycheques down so Canadians can afford to eat.”
Lantsman accused the Liberals of “taxing food-insecure Canadians to feed billions into their growing bureaucracy.”
Ottawa has sought short-term measures to address rising grocery bills, such as the one-time GST rebate top-up that began rolling out to some Canadians last week.
That credit program is set to transition next month into the higher Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, which was announced in January along with the development of the food security strategy.
Where will the strategy's money go?
A significant portion of the strategy’s funding — $750 million over seven years — is earmarked for “controlled environment agriculture.”
This includes supporting the expansion of greenhouses and vertical farms to grow produce year-round that Canada currently imports, such as strawberries, lettuce and various vegetables.
Currently, Canadians rely on imports for 88 per cent of fresh fruit and 72 per cent of vegetables consumed.
The plan also targets what officials described as a long-standing gap in Canada’s agri-food sector: the tendency to export raw materials only to import them back as processed goods.
For example, Canada exported $724 million worth of fresh tomatoes in 2025 while importing $511 million in processed tomato products.
To reverse this trend, the government will turn to Farm Credit Canada which will make $1 billion available for capital-intensive processing projects.
“We need more Canada,” the strategy document states. “More food that is grown here. More food that is processed here. More food on store shelves from here.”
In the retail sector, the government is strengthening the Competition Bureau with an additional $12.9 million in annual ongoing funding to better investigate anti-competitive practices like “property controls,” where major grocers use lease agreements to prevent competitors from opening nearby.
The government also aims to help small-scale livestock producers by creating temporary exemptions for inter-provincial trade of fresh meat. This will allow meat processed in provincial abattoirs to be sold across borders in regions facing slaughter capacity shortages, which is expected to lower transportation costs and increase local supply.
Government officials said Thursday they do not anticipate new federal-provincial agreements will be required to facilitate this trade.
Help for farmers
The strategy includes several measures to support farmers directly, including:
- Increasing the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption to $1.25 million to help with farm successions;
- Doubling guaranteed loan limits and extending terms to help young farmers enter the sector; and
- Maintaining interest-free limits on the Advance Payment Program at $250,000 for the 2026 program year.
Regulatory changes are also coming to speed up the approval of seeds, fertilizers and veterinary biologics.
The government plans to amend the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act and the Pest Control Products Act to force regulators to consider food security and costs when making decisions, provided health and safety are not compromised.
This includes a controversial provision allowing for the temporary use of certain pesticides under specific conditions if they are deemed necessary for national food or economic security.
“We’re seeing some really positive developments in this strategy, but success will depend on how it is implemented,” Keith Currie, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, said in a statement.
“It must meaningfully involve farmers and the broader agricultural sector to achieve the best results. Producers are on the front lines of food security and must be active partners in delivering solutions that strengthen domestic production, improve affordability, and enhance supply chain resilience.”
The CFA urged continued attention to rising input costs and labour shortages “will be essential to enabling farmers and agri-food businesses to deliver on the strategy’s objectives,” and said additional clarity and action are needed.
Even thou it may save us a few pennies we are all stuck paying the interest on this borrowed money which negates any savings and puts us in a deeper hole of debt.
So, Trump stopped the war. This means the gouge should stop. But it wont. These greedy bastards will continue and where’s Carney? Oh he’s p*ssing around in Paris and Ireland, schmoozing away on our dime! CANADA NEEDS TO SERIOUSLY REVOLT AND BURN DOWN THE POLITICAL KINGDOM AND A FEW BILLIONAIRES EMPIRES!
This is horrible. You’re literally subsidizing billionaires! Every time gov subsidizes groceries Galen raises his prices to make up the difference anyway. It effectively subsidizes billionaires. This government is not working for us but for them!
Carney spent almost $200k in catering for 3 flights he took. That is staggering. Spare no cost.
Hey, can anyone find me a study that shows Ontario has less exposure to current food inflation than other provinces?
Asking for Mark Carney as he clearly forgot to make evidence based decisions.
Is it aiming when your policy has no meaningful impact and wont actually accomplish anything but some political cover for a party that has not had a single viable policy in 11 years?
Just more empty slogans from Carney.
Lower the cost don’t just hand out taxpayer money. What a garbage government
Anonymous
June 13, 2026 at 2:33 pm
I see the monkeys have showed up to fling their poop at Carney and the Liberals.
Gee thats funny, the only one slinging excrement is you. What everyone else is saying is the truth. If you cant see that, you are the problem Canada faces. Fascist p*gs abound.
Global news is now state TV similar to RT news in Russia . The propaganda network for the failed liberal government
I view this as government controlled facilities. Where only the welfare can access government grown food using food stamps. I sure didn’t get a rebate. I should go on welfare. I’d be better off and it’s what the government wants.
Libs have failed again. Trudeau and Champagne promised grocery price relief for Thanksgiving 2023. Just more broken promises and false hope.
@Anonymous.
You mean we have shown up to sling the truth? Lol. Trudeau promised lower grocery prices in 2023 and Carney last year Still nothing has been done
I expect another disaster by the Liberals They will spend 2X-3X budget and the “results” won’t even be 10% of expectations.
Don Davis – it will provide independent grocers another option to buy local produce from instead of only the major chain’s wholesale divisions.
This is an effort to challenge the ‘co-opetition’ of large firms operating in sync to gouge consumers.
Grown in Canada food is the most expensive. How exactly will this lower costs?
I see the monkeys have showed up to fling their poop at Carney and the Liberals.
One huge Ontario hub? Given the carbon tax and the price of gas for transport wouldn’t it make more sense to allow markets across Canada to produce locally, hubs in areas with a much shorter growing season like Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Regina, Baffin Island, the areas with the harshest climates makes far more sense. Low population, harsh climate and vast distances between communities are the problem. Localization is the solution.
Carney told us last election to judge his time as PM with prices at the grocery store. Well a year later Canada has the highest food inflation in the G7 and the worst economy in the G20, and not one project approved by the MPO. Total failure.
I recall Geebo tried to reduce fertilizer usage and those reducing crop yields. All for climate change but forgetting people need food.
All Liberal policies last decade have added costs and this inflation.
@ Anonymous 10:44
LMAO I look around me and see average families all the time with 2 or more kids. Keep those Elbows up bozo.
3.2 billion (it will be double that) to be funneled to corporate executives, consultants, and administration.
Cosat of farm inputs went up by 50% or more this year. All blamed on Iran and trump of course.
Can we help with that? Nah, we need some more studies and lets invest in some brookfield greenhouses that will produce food for a few hundred people in the GTA.
Canada is cooked. This will all collapse within 10 years and we will be living in true austerity under an unapolegetic facist government. And Canadian citizens have nobody to blame but ourselves.
Escellent commentary but who at the government level will listen. I 2was born in the forties and even then Manitoba, Saskatchewan and
Alberta farmers were being tipped off.
“Howard pim” (see below) kind of says it all!
@Tim Bits – that’s why its called average. 4 family is rare nowadays. Get some brain, MAGA.
This is how clueless Carney really is. He claimed that the average Canadian family will spend $800 a month on groceries, that’s $10,000 a year. According to Canada’s Food Price Report 2026 a family of 4 will spend $1,464 per month on food, that’s $17,572 per year. An increase of $994.63 over last year, and ALMOST DOUBLE what Carney said. Is it any wonder we have the second most expensive food bill in the G7 with someone as clueless as Carney in charge.
Global liberal funded with stolen taxpayers money propaganda outlet spits more treasonous lies to the Canadian public it is stealing from.
Carbon tax is cause of inflation and its doing nothing but increasing stocks that con man Carney owns in Brookfield locked in til 2031.
Wake up people communist Liberal dictatorship is destroying the country from within then add the mass Muslim immigration. The social construct of Islam is non believers are the enemy. Inflation is just another con caused by the Liberals.
Hilarious Elbows Up Canadians blaming Trump and Iran war. I guess they forgot gas was this high also when Trudeau had his consumer carbon tax on energy, including gasoline and diesel and it was to increase every year. Liberals told us it had zero effect on prices and inflation.
You should be growing some of your own food by now. It’s the only way to get good nutrition that isn’t polluted by “the science”.
More biologics = lower fertility rates
Their plan to get rid of the corporate interests controlling 75% of the foodmarket in Canada is to earmark more Billions of $ to be given away to Liberal insiders… Another swing and a miss from the Liberals…
They realize that grocery bills are higher as a result of excessive taxation that they themselves enacted, dont they?
This is no solution, now our tax dollars are directly funnelled into the corrupt grocer mafia monopoly instead of away….while these crooks demand WE pay for their maintenance AND equipment…they gouge consumers and pay off our MP’s.
Criminal
NO CONFIDENCE
the liberals are owned by the monopolies they created and it’s so blatant it’s literally abhorrent.
We are run by parasites…I now support wholeheartedly those pursuing separatist agendas
Canada is run by MORONS
As I warm the two potatoes I found in a ditch by the remaining sunlight passing through the mud stained curtains of my cardboard hut,I think to myself “Yes ,I have done well by voting Liberal .The dream of a Socialist Canada is finally becoming reality”
Remember when Trudeau and Jagmeet Bling had our backs when it came to the cost of groceries ?
Well ,as usual, nothing got better.
I guess with Carney leading now we should feel a little relief knowing that there is only one hand twisting the knife rather than two.
Another 3.5 billion in debt. And nothing will change. How stupid the people of Canada are to think Carney is the answer.
Instead of setting up this $3.2 billion national food security program (more government employee’s to manage), why doesn’t the Liberal government just increase the “Basic Personal Amount” tax exemption to $30,000?
That way taxpayers don’t have to pay increased taxes on the $3.2 billion that the government needs to borrow.
A much more efficient solution IMO.
The first $1Billion allocated to the Ontario grocery hub! Where throughout Canadian provinces/territories is the remaining $2.3 Billion being ‘visually’ alloted? Why this huge Ontario hub? Is it one of the major projects requiring it to go forward to the Calgary major projects office for prior approval or the ‘cart before the horse getting out of the barn’? Just asking!
So $200 Billion for a train to Quebec for a few thousand commuters and only just over $3 Billion to lower food costs for 41 million Canadians. Something is rotten in the state of Canada Horatio.
Why not try to cut the input cost to growing food and manufacturing. Grocers run on razor thin margins also. Yes they make more money each year but there is more mouths to feed also.Fuel /energy is a major component for food so maybe the Feds can cut the taxes on those items.
Here goes another $3.2B tax dollars down the toilet. This hair brained scheme won’t work until the LPC drops all their carbon, plastic and packaging taxes. Those are the really problem.
Socialism will improve things? Our central planner is really driving more and more rot into the failing economy.
The only thing going down in Canada will be Liberal Party support once the Elbozos realize they have been duped again.
2027 48%
2028 32%
2029 23%
Nobody knows more about food than the Liberals.
Asides from the gratuitous catering bills,the entire Party is essentially a bowl full of fruits,nuts and flakes.
Instead of a 10 year plan and spending all that money why not spend that money now on reducing taxes so Canadians can afford to buy food.
$3.2 Billion to go to Cricket Farms for the masses
Not sure how this equals cheaper groceries. I live in Toronto where the Ontario Food Terminal is located. It is used by grocers and restaurants, not everyday folk.
Growing more food in Canada is a good idea but it is also a much more expensive idea, so I am again mystified as to how that would translate to cheaper groceries.
What it looks like is a government spending money to make it look like they are being proactive even though it is clearly reactionary.
The goverment has never cut costs for anything
I am sure the useful idiots will lap it up though
We could just share the catered food for Carney and cronies
In 2007 the BC Government changed regulations on abattoirs. The number of plants dropped from over 300 to 13. This reduced access for small scale livestock operations to have access to meat processing and drove up costs. The number of abattoirs have increased since regulation changes in 2021 but no where near previous levels.
Tolly – wow, usually its Harper’s fault but you went all the way back to blame Brian Mulroney! Wow, talk about ignorance. How’s them elbows doing.
I wish from manitoba west we could separate from these dummies out east that keep voting these stinking liberals in
Because of government rules, regulations and policies there are only three large beef processing corporations in Canada. They decided how much beef is on the market and of course prices. The small and medium processing companies have been put out of business so we have no other choices. Why are there only three companies? Those companies give massive donations to the Liberal Party of Canada to make sure they have no competition. No other country allows such corruption.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
The plan is to keep on printing more money.
So it will cost Canadian tax payers $3.2 billion to lower grocery bills? Therefore something has to go up in order to pay for this. Keep voting liberal?
weird, all the farmland is being turned into condos, and townhouses. BC destroyed all the farmland in Richmond . Not going to work . Maybe encourage families who have a yard to grow a garden, opps, can’t because everyone has to work, so no time for a garden.
Whose fault is it that the so called big 5 have the monopoly of the food supply. Just like companies have the monopoly on the cell phones, internet ,airlines just to mention a few. Canadians have been getting ripped off for years and the government doesn’t care.
Let’s put this into perspective. Up to $200 BILLION on a fast train from Ontario to Quebec serving probably a few thousand commuters a day. Just $3.2 BILLION to fix food inflation for 41 Million Canadians. Seems making Liberal insiders and their friends rich is WAY more important than seriously trying to solve a national food crisis.
Again the big plans and promises that never happen but the money will be spent. How many promises has Carney and this liberal government made and nothing changes they haven’t even got rid of the barriers that each province has to restrict movement of goods across Canada. Canada will never be self sufficient because we don’t have the capacity to be self sufficient or infrastructure in place to be self sufficient, like it or not we are reliant on the US and Carney is trying to make deals with other countries for goods that we cannot produce. Again all talk and spending money we don’t have.
Often wonder why are we getting pickles from India when they grow in our backyard…. god only know what they are adding to them
They create inflation to pump up the stock market, increase tax revenue, and pay off their friends, and then they justify doing it even more to try and rectify the first round of failure.
More announcements to announce dollar amounts. You will only see prices go up. Not one project will be built from this fund. Zero greenhouses will be constructed but there will be a fund manager and their staff will start sending a few dollars here and a few dollars there. Meanwhile domestic food prices will increase, as will your carbon taxes April 1st further increasing domestic fuel and food prices.
I see a big cheque in Metro’s.future
This all goes back to Brian Mulroney and the original Canada US free trade agreement. Many of us at the time said exactly what PM Carney is saying now – a country that doesn’t control its own food supply is at the mercy of others. Many of us knew that Mulroney’s deal was trading away Canada’s sovereignty ipso facto in favor of corporate greed. Glad to see we have a PM now that is pro Canada and not pro Wall Street per se.
…and another “I’m from the Govt and I’m here to help” fiasco in the making! Wondering which LIB MP wife will be an “executive” in this new bureaucratic government agency?
lol what a joke
Didn’t Champagne and Trudeau buy freezers for Loblaws. More wasted $. Never ends.
Biiiiiiiig talking Carney….there are a lot of things Canada can’t do for itself anymore. Liberals have turned us into a bunch of tax feeding sheep while they allow other countries and corporations to drain our resources.
What a load of Liberal Baloney – the non edible kind. There will be no metrics to prove how successful this will be, They would do better to simply handover the money to food banks across the Country,
You know your government has failed when they have to give hand outs for food.Average you will get is under 20 dollars how does that help.
So, another $48.11 from Loblaws? I actually have to agree with “Try This”. Here in N.B we’re seeing family farmlands being sold and turned into condos and garbage apartment buildings, and urban sprawl eating up park lands and forests. Where does it stop?
Mr. Wilson says it all! All puffery, they have contributed extensively to our food dilemma.
most of the fresh food we buy is during the winter. So how exactly is changing from a Loblaws warehouse to a government run warehouse going to change that, or save any money?
We have a problem that our fruit orchards have been turned into residential housing. That has happened over many years. Is Canada going to buy the houses back, and turn the subdivisions back into orchards?
It is good that we are removing barriers to intraprovincial trade. Why were they there in the first place. Why wait until now to do what should have been done 50 years ago?
CFIA finally getting corrected… does this mean no more culls of healthy ostrich flocks?
Can I finally get something that will control my dandelions? or mosquitoes?
Honestly most of the improvements will be free. It is the billions wasted funding a tomato cannery that boggles the mind.
Greenhouses are good – any chance we can get pipelines for the natural gas to heat them?
It does scare me when Liberals talk about healthy food. Does that mean bugs or steaks, or only vegetables?
Are they thinking of a cross Canada rail line that travels faster than 25kph to transport the goods? – most of the costs are energy driven.
What are the plans to pay for this largess? More debt that will hurt us in the pocket.
Another boondoggle coming for the Liberals.