Restaurants Canada new Ottawa office signals the advocacy organization’s desire “to engage directly with federal decision-makers and strengthen our voice on Parliament Hill.”

 “It’s just so much easier … when we’re right next door,” said Matt Trimestra, vice-president of federal affairs for Restaurants Canada, from his new York Street office in the ByWard Market.

Proximity is key for one of Restaurants Canada’s main campaigns to remove the GST/HST from all food, including restaurant meals. A petition to remove the tax recently surpassed its goal of 10,000 signatures.

“Canadians are struggling with rising living costs while local restaurants work to recover from years of disruption. Unlike groceries, restaurant meals are taxed under the GST/HST, making them more expensive for consumers and adding pressure on foodservice businesses,” the petition argues.

“Removing the GST/HST from restaurant meals would ease costs for families and support an industry that employs over a million Canadians,” the Restaurants Canada petition adds. “We urge the federal government to modernize its tax policy and exempt all food, including restaurant meals, from GST/HST to protect jobs and strengthen communities.”

The motivation behind the campaign was strongly inspired by the GST/HST holiday announced by former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau and which was in effect from December 2024 to February 2025. The break provided Canadians with a taste of what tax-free restaurant meals would be like.

“Why do we tax food at all?” Triemstra asks. “People need to eat. Making it more expensive with tax is … bad public policy. And a year ago, when we had that GST/HST holiday, it just really worked.”

The numbers do back up the organization’s argument.

Recent Statistics Canada findings show there was a bump in the number of foodservice jobs to 23,900 during the GST/HST holiday. Meanwhile, jobs were down to 10,300 in the two months following the holiday.

‘Why do we tax food at all? People need to eat. Making it more expensive with tax is kind of just a bad public policy. And a year ago, when we had that GST/HST holiday, it just really worked.’

— Matt Triemstra, Restaurants Canada

Although solid predictions can’t be made about the potential impact of a permanent tax change such as this, the change could actually lead to a bump in consumer prices.

“Based on economic theory, if demand increased during this period and supply was the same, you’d expect prices to increase and sightly offset the decrease in the tax rate,” says Andrew Barclay, economist and senior analyst at StatsCan.

That possibility doesn’t deter Triemstra, who said, he and his team will keep pressing the federal government to announce a permanent tax holiday on dining out.

“As a next step, we had been targeting the last budget. So obviously we didn’t get in that, but we weren’t that surprised. … It’s going to continue to be an advocacy campaign for us,” said Triemstra.

The recently announced Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit which is slated to increase by 25 per cent in July 2026 with the goal of making food more affordable for Canadians, may affect their campaign however, Triemstra says.

“We have to look at these together and say, how can we still push for our GST campaign if the government has now acted for consumers by giving this GST relief at the moment? But that doesn’t mean (the campaign) isn’t going to continue to be a priority for us.”