🍁Canuck1867🍁

When my husband died in late summer last year, my daughter and I didn't just lose him. We lost more than half our household income overnight. Suddenly, every dollar had a job. Every bill became a math problem. Because my income dropped so dramatically, I became eligible for a GST rebate of about $435. To some people, that might sound like a nice little bonus. To people like me, trying to live on less than $27,000 a year, it's not spending money. It's survival money. Where I live, water, garbage, and recycling cost me $520 every three months. Coincidentally, those bills arrive around the same time as the GST rebate. So the GST cheque doesn't buy treats. It doesn't fund vacations. It doesn't even make life easier. It mostly disappears into a utility bill before I can blink. Today I'm sharing screenshots from my CRA account to demonstrate the federal government's latest affordability miracle with their renamed GST benefit masquerading as the Groceries and Essentials Benefit. My GST rebate went up. By six dollars. Not sixty. Not six hundred. Six. Apparently somewhere in Ottawa, somebody looked at the affordability crisis facing Canadians and thought: "Hmm, needs more half sandwich."🤔 What makes this worse is knowing there are millions of Canadians out there who need help just as badly as I do, but don't qualify for a penny of it. People working two jobs. People trying to raise families. Seniors watching every grocery bill climb higher. People doing everything right and still falling behind. So to @MarkJCarney, I have a simple question. Why are you celebrating the existence of a Grocery and Essentials Benefit instead of asking why Canadians need one in the first place? How much did it cost taxpayers for the photo-op? Do you not see the hypocrisy in it? Because that is the part I can't understand. A government should not be standing in a grocery store congratulating itself for handing back a few dollars of taxpayers' own money. A government should be creating the conditions where people can afford groceries without government assistance. The goal should be fewer Canadians needing benefits, not more! I'm not proud to qualify for this. 👉🏻 I don't want to qualify for a government cheque. 👉🏻 I don't want to qualify for a renamed GST rebate. 👉🏻 I don't want my kid to qualify for a school lunch program because parents can no longer afford lunches. I want an economy where ordinary Canadians can stand on their own feet and keep more of what they earn and be proud about it. The fact that Ottawa felt the need to rename the GST rebate to include the words "Groceries and Essentials" should have set off alarm bells in every cabinet office in the country. Because groceries and essentials are not luxuries. If Canadians need government assistance to afford the basics of life, that is not evidence of success. It's evidence that something has gone very badly wrong. What makes it even harder to stomach is watching a government talk about borrowing billions for new projects and sovereign wealth funds while ordinary Canadians are being told to celebrate an extra six dollars. Six dollars! That's not economic leadership. That's a receipt. Perhaps the question Canadians should be asking is this: If #MarkCarney's resume is as impressive as advertised, why do the results look like this? At some point, Canadians stop listening to credentials and start looking at outcomes. And the outcomes are speaking for themselves!