There’s a petition to remove taxes from all food in Canada

Feel like it would be a good idea to remove taxes from all food in Canada? Now there’s a petition you can sign to potentially make that a reality.

Currently, Canadians don’t pay GST or HST on groceries, but do pay taxes for restaurant meals. During the tax holiday spearheaded by Restaurants Canada, they revealed a few stats about taxes and food.

First of all, they found 84 per cent of Canadians think food should not be taxed, point blank. Around 24,000 jobs were also created during the tax holiday, which was more than the entire year previous.

Food service sales also increased by 8.3 per cent, and bankruptcies went down 50 per cent year over year.

This information comes as Restaurants Canada has been recording record high numbers of bankruptcies over the last five years, and the group has been seeking solutions to this issue.

Restaurants Canada president and CEO Kelly Higginson told YourCityWithIN.com in a previous interview that restaurants are “the first thing to go” while Canadians are facing a rising cost of living.

“Canadians saw their grocery bills going up, their cost of living going up, all the things we need to live were going up,” said Higginson.

“We really need the government to understand the value of the industry. We’re the fourth-largest private employer in the country. We impact every single community. Restaurants are critical to our neighbourhoods.”

The petition can be found online and is nearly halfway to its goal of 10,000 signatures.