Canada Day is a time for us all to gather with family and friends on a pleasant July evening for a good meal in celebration of this great land, while thanking the Good Lord for making us Canadian.

Of course, it’s not the easiest time to be Canadian, a thought which may have occurred to you as you did the shopping for your cookout. After all, ground beef is up 10% year-over-year. Chicken has jumped an astonishing 30.3% over the past year. And potatoes and other produce are all notably more expensive than last summer.

It’s just another reminder of how much harder it has become to make ends meet in this country.

As Sylvain Charlebois has pointed out, food prices have outpaced general inflation every single month since Mark Carney became Prime Minister, and Canada leads the G7 in food inflation.

There are lots of opinions as to why this is. Charlebois isn’t wrong to note the “structural barriers that have hindered competitiveness,” things like interprovincial trade barriers. Meanwhile, the Elbows Up crowd will happily blame Donald Trump for every problem under the sun.

But there’s one cause that gets nowhere near enough attention: the cost of energy. Which, at the moment, is sky high.

Remember, every burger that lands on your plate has travelled a long way to get there: from farm to processing plant to distribution centre to grocery store to your backyard. Every leg of that journey requires energy – diesel to run the farm equipment and delivery trucks, natural gas to produce the nitrogen fertilizer for the feed crops and to heat the barns and buildings, electricity to keep all the lights on, and gasoline to get your car to the store.

All of those things are more expensive than they used to be.

The costs are compounding, until they are ultimately paid by the consumer.

That means you!

In other words, this isn’t just a supply story. It’s an energy story.

That shouldn’t be a problem in a country like Canada, which has been blessed with incredible natural resources. If there’s one thing that we shouldn’t be short of, it’s energy!

But, for the past decade plus, our government in Ottawa has effectively declared war on Canadian energy. They’ve enacted “green” policies, whose principle effect has been to drive up our cost of living, while driving down our standard of living.

Now, we can address this by kicking their Net-Zero policies to the curb: ending our carbon taxation regime (including the so-called “Clean Fuel Regulations”), eliminating the red tape strangling our energy sector, and building the pipelines that can get Canadian resources to market.

These policies would signal to the world that Canada is open for business, and make us the energy superpower we should be.

As things stand, that doesn’t seem likely. Our leaders are too committed to the Net-Zero Ideology.

Proud, hard-working Canadians deserve better than this. We should be able to gather with our families on Canada Day – or any other day of the year – without having to do desperate math at the checkout counter.

This Canada Day, let’s make our voices heard.

We at Canadians for Affordable Energy are asking our followers to snap a photo of your grocery receipt from your Canada Day shopping (please hide any personal or payment information for privacy). Then reply to our post on Facebook, Instagram, or X with the photo.

We’ll use these real-world examples in our ongoing research, and to highlight how elevated energy costs are making life in Canada increasingly unaffordable.

Together, we can show decision-makers the true impact on families celebrating our nation.

Thank you, and Happy Canada Day!