Company calling on Manitoba to implement fresh food tax credit

Produce vegetables are displayed for sale at a grocery store in Aylmer, Que., on Thursday, May 26, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

One Manitoba-based company is calling on the provincial government to implement a fresh food tax credit as food bank usage reaches an all-time high.

On Tuesday, Peak of the Market Ltd. announced that it wrote a letter to the minister of agriculture and other MLAs asking to discuss the tax credit as a way to help support food banks and improve food security in Manitoba.

Pamela Kolochuk, CEO of Peak of the Market, said this tax credit would help to create an incentive that doesn’t currently exist.

“As the need becomes more and more within Manitoba and Canada, at Peak [of the Market], we feel that the government and others need to be providing incentives for people to donate fresh produce,” she said in an interview on Wednesday.

According to Peak of the Market, which produces and markets vegetables to retailers, the proposed tax credit would serve as a tool to encourage agricultural producers to donate more fresh food to eligible organizations, including food banks.

Peak of the Market also said this move would help to reduce food waste as it means less food will end up in landfills.

“Reducing food waste is making sure it ends up on people’s tables instead of in the landfills,” Kolochuk said.

Other provinces, including Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia, already have programs in place where producers receive tax credits ranging from 25 to 50 per cent of market value.

Kolochuk said they are hoping for something similar in Manitoba.

“It allows farmers to get a 25 per cent tax credit on product that they would probably have no revenue on and no expense on at the end of the day, because it’s just going in the garbage,” she said.

“Being able to have a tax credit on 25 to 50 per cent of the value of that product provides a decrease in taxes for them on the value of the product that they’re going to be donating instead of putting it in a landfill.”

Moving forward, Peak of the Market hopes the government takes this request seriously, and continues to look at the issue of poverty in the province.

“This can be a piece to help, not to fully solve the situation, but support the situation in finding opportunities to provide more food not just to Harvest Manitoba, but others that are in need of this food that are distributing it throughout Manitoba,” Kolochuk said.