Federal grocery rebates going, going, gone

The federal grocery rebate sent out to eligible Canadians Wednesday is being sucked up fast at supermarkets.

CityNews spoke with people on the street about how much of a help the one-time federal payment is in dealing with the high cost of living.

“It’s just a one-time payment and it will help me with my groceries for one month and then it’s back, I guess, to as if we didn’t have it,” says one person in Vancouver.

Others say the rebate is too little, too late.

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“The fact it is just a one-time thing and it’s not a whole lot of money for two people, it’s going to provide relief for a week or two but, in the long-term, it’s meaningless,”

The federal payment is tied to income — based on 2021 tax returns — and those who qualify could receive up to $234 if they are single, with a family of four getting up to $467.

“It would be used immediately,” says one father of two. “It would probably feel really good and then it would be like an inheritance, essentially never be available again.”

The grocery rebate is integrated with the regular July 5 GST/HST credit quarterly payment from the Canada Revenue Agency.

In total, $2.5 billion is being sent out to 11 million Canadians as targeted relief for those most in need as food inflation remains stubbornly high.

Marc Lee from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says the one-time payment is “a benefit” but factoring in food inflation, it doesn’t come “anywhere close to covering the full additional costs of food that they are paying out of pocket relative to what they would have spent a couple of years ago.”

Lee believes the government should look to those who have profited most from the situation to pay up and help struggling Canadians.

“For industries like oil and gas, and industries like supermarkets where the companies have been making extraordinary profits…it’s fitting to impose a windfall or excess-profits tax on those profits and then use that money to flow back to households that need it through mechanisms like the grocery rebate or GST credits.”

–With files from OMNI News and Xiao Li