{"id":489056,"date":"2026-02-21T03:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T03:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/489056\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T03:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T03:27:07","slug":"restaurants-canada-opens-ottawa-office-as-push-for-no-tax-dining-ramps-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/489056\/","title":{"rendered":"Restaurants Canada opens Ottawa office as push for no-tax dining ramps up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Restaurants Canada<\/a> new Ottawa office signals the advocacy organization\u2019s desire \u201cto engage directly with federal decision-makers and strengthen our voice on Parliament Hill.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s just so much easier \u2026 when we\u2019re right next door,\u201d said Matt Trimestra, vice-president of federal affairs for Restaurants Canada, from his new York Street office in the ByWard Market.<\/p>\n

Proximity is key for one of Restaurants Canada\u2019s main campaigns to remove the GST\/HST from all food, including restaurant meals. A petition<\/a> to remove the tax recently surpassed its goal of 10,000 signatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanadians 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,\u201d the petition argues.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemoving the GST\/HST from restaurant meals would ease costs for families and support an industry that employs over a million Canadians,\u201d the Restaurants Canada petition adds. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do we tax food at all?\u201d Triemstra asks. \u201cPeople need to eat. Making it more expensive with tax is \u2026 bad public policy. And a year ago, when we had that GST\/HST holiday, it just really worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

The numbers do back up the organization\u2019s argument. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u2018Why 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.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Triemstra, Restaurants Canada<\/p>\n

Although solid predictions can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on economic theory, if demand increased during this period and supply was the same, you\u2019d expect prices to increase and sightly offset the decrease in the tax rate,\u201d says Andrew Barclay, economist and senior analyst at StatsCan.<\/p>\n

That possibility doesn\u2019t deter Triemstra, who said, he and his team will keep pressing the federal government to announce a permanent tax holiday on dining out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a next step, we had been targeting the last budget. So obviously we didn\u2019t get in that, but we weren\u2019t that surprised. \u2026 It\u2019s going to continue to be an advocacy campaign for us,\u201d said Triemstra.<\/p>\n

The recently announced Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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\u2019t mean (the campaign) isn\u2019t going to continue to be a priority for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Restaurants Canada new Ottawa office signals the advocacy organization\u2019s desire \u201cto engage directly with federal decision-makers and strengthen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-489056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}