Several issues may leap to mind as Canadians push their grocery carts around the store. “How can I afford this chicken?

How can I put healthy food in my kids’ lunchboxes, given the soaring prices of peanut butter, fruit and vegetables?”

What isn’t likely foremost in their minds is the lifecycle of their grocery cart.

Most taxpayers will be shocked and alarmed to hear that, in 2018, they paid $105,000 for a Simon Fraser University study titled, “Cart-ography: Tracking the birth, life and death of an urban grocery cart.”

That was one of more than $1 billion in questionable grants handed out to researchers by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, according to documents unearthed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Statistics Canada figures show Canada’s average salary is

See Full Page