Price-fixing at Canada’s grocery stores is bigger than just bread
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Summary
Inflation, shrinkflation, greedflation, price fixing: these are just some of the topics in the news of late when it comes to food, and the ever-increasing cost of food. In this episode, we talk to food economist Sylvain Charlebois about what's driving up food prices, what's causing it, and how to stop it.
Transcript
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keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay
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for what you need. TD, ready for you. Inflation, shrinkflation, greedflation, price fixing. These
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are just some of the topics in the news of late when it comes to food, the ever-increasing
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cost of food. Hello, I'm Brian Lilly, and this is the Full Comment Podcast. I don't mean
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to depress you right now talking about food and how much it costs to feed yourself and
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your family, but it is a topic of discussion nonetheless. Now, before we get started on
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this most vexing of topics, I do want to ask you a favor. On whatever device, whatever
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app you're listening to is on, please hit the subscribe button. Make sure that you get
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every episode sent to you as soon as it's available. And tell your friends about us,
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the riveting conversations we have here at the Full Comment Podcast. Conversations like
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the price of food. The topic is coming up everywhere, and it's little wonder. We all have to eat,
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and it's getting more expensive. If you heard about the latest Stats Canada report on inflation,
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sounded like good news. Inflation is cool, down to 3.4%. But food inflation remains high. Grocery
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prices going up an average of 9% compared to a year ago. And for some products, it's even higher.
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Oils, like canola or olive oil, up 20%. Bakery products, up 15. Cereal, your cornflakes is costing
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you 13.6% more than a year ago. So what's causing it, and how do we fix it? It's been the topic of
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some discussion among politicians, some looking for real solutions, some looking to grandstand. And of
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course, we've got the government just introduced grocery rebate. Will that help? These are the
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questions I want to put to Sylvain Charlebois, the food professor. Sylvain is a professor of food
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distribution and policy. He's also scientific director at Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie
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University in Halifax. But today, he joins us from the Food Center of Canada, perhaps Quebec City.
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It's certainly the capital of tourism right now, for sure.
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I'm doing well. And after you told me about being in Quebec City, I'm just thinking back to
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some of the wonderful meals I've had there. The restaurants are great.
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Oh, yes. And affordable, too. It's surprising. Service is great. Lots of people. We were out in
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old Quebec last night, and my goodness, the place was just jumping. It's great to see people back
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out there. It is quite warm. It's very hot right now in Quebec City, but people are enjoying the
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great food, enjoying the great company, and it's nice.
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The issue of food inflation, this is something that you and I have talked about before. You've
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done so many interviews about it. We've listened to the politicians talk. What is driving up the
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cost of food? Is it just supply chain issues? Is it global inflation generally? Is it the
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greedflation that we've heard so many politicians jump on, I think, for calculated partisan gain?
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Oh, yes, absolutely. So this is what happened, Brian, when you politicize the issue of food
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inflation. On the one side, you see many people accusing businesses, accusing even individuals,
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individuals, individualizing food inflation, like what we saw against Galen Western, for
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example. And also, you have governments giving money to people to cope with food inflation.
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So it's a bit messy out there. The fact of the matter is that we are looking at the agri-food
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system, and the reality of agri-food business is that it's always been a high volume, low margin,
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environment. And so when things like COVID happens, when Ukraine happens, when you have the weather
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not playing along all around the world, and of course, supply chain issues have actually impacted
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the efficiency of food systems, you end up seeing a slew of factors just pushing prices higher.
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The thing that I think has been underappreciated in the media is that because you are in a low margin
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environment, you can't just jack up prices all at once. You have to incrementally increase prices as
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salaries go up, the price packaging goes up, and a lot of different things actually are more expensive
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now. And we're feeling it. We've been feeling this inflationary heat at the grocery store for quite a
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while. And it's going to last a while. So if people are saying, well, Ukraine's over, the Ukrainian effect
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is over, COVID has been over now for a while, supply chains seems to be, supply chains are doing better,
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which is all true. But at the same time, you're also seeing companies coping with higher costs,
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no matter what, but you can't really just force your way through the supply chain and ask for more
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money. It just doesn't work that way overnight. So you have to kind of incrementally increase prices
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over time, which is why now the gap between food inflation and inflation is over 5%. And so
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that's why people are still upset with food prices in general.
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Seen this coming for a while. I remember it was about two years ago, speaking to a farmer from out
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west who was very happy on the one side that his commodity prices had gone up. He was getting more
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per bushel for his wheat, but all his inputs were going up, sometimes at a faster pace. So whether it
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was the fuel to run his tractors, his seeders, whether it was the fertilizer, which definitely
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due to the war in Ukraine, the cost of fertilizer went up, depending on when you purchase, between
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two and four times what you had paid the year before. This is, I guess, slowly trickling through
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the system would be part of what we're talking about here.
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Not necessarily, Brian. You see, farmers are dealing with price-taking economics. So you
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basically will take the price the market will want you to get, essentially. And so on the one side,
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as a farmer, you hope for the best. You hope that commodity prices remain high and that your input
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costs remain low. But that's rare. That's very rare. And that's why often farmers do experience a bad
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year. Last year was actually pretty good. They actually were able to get decent contracts.
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Input costs were higher. Some of it had to do with the economics of distribution. But as you know,
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Brian, they had to pay tariffs due to measures against Russia. Yeah. And so those measures really
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impacted farmers. And what was really unfortunate is that Mr. Bebo actually promised farmers to
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reimburse them because it was about $34 million. And $34 million is quite a lot of money for farmers
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in particular because you can't get that money back by selling higher. That's what price-taking economics
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are all about. And so unfortunately, they were never reimbursed as a result. But still, overall,
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it was a very good year. They had to put a lot of money in the ground to make some good money.
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This year, my guess is it's going to be an okay year, but it's not going to be as good as last year.
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Let's deal with the hot issue in the media of greedflation. There was this idea that Galen Weston,
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I can't recall, is he retired or it's about to take effect? He was the president and CEO of Loblaws.
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Recently announced he's stepping down. He's the guy in the yellow sweater from all those
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He's stepping down, but he remains chair, so he's still going to be around for sure.
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And the family's still going to own it. But there was this claim that Galen Weston and these other
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supermarket executives, who nobody knows quite as well, you know the names, but most people wouldn't
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know who they are. The claim though was that, well, these guys are just being greedy and they're
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gouging customers. And when you see, I saw a jar of jam the other day, something I don't buy that
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often, but I still know around what the price should be. And it was $7.49 for what I used to
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pay under five bucks for. No wonder people say, oh, they're just being greedy. They're gouging me
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now. But you've looked at greedflation. You've looked at this idea that it's just gouging. And
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you've said, hmm, the facts don't back it up. Why and how do you say that?
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So are grocers making good money? Of course they are. I actually do believe that Metro,
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Empire, and Loblaw, the big three, as we call them, are very well-managed companies. But if you look at
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financial reports over the last couple of quarters, you will notice that companies,
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grocers, aren't really making money selling food. Loblaws would be one case. So Loblaws made almost
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$2 billion last year, which is a lot of money for Loblaws. And was it a record profit year,
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profiteering year? It was, absolutely. So to say that they are making retro profits is not
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necessarily wrong. But if you look at the last quarter, Q4, you'll notice that Loblaws' food
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sales have gone up by only 3.1%. 3.1% while food inflation was well over 9% for the entire quarter.
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That means, Brian, that they're treading water when it's time to sell food. They're making money
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selling drugs, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, clothing, real estate. Their banking program is doing very
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well, too. That's how they're making money. Sobiz is another example. So if you look at Empire's
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financial results in the last quarter, just the one that was reported a few weeks ago, they actually
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sold during that quarter $16 million less of food compared to the same quarter last year. In other
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words, people are spending less on food at the grocery store, not more. They're retreating with
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their wallets. They're going to dollar stores. They're buying different brands. They're trading
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down. And why they're trading down? It's because of mortgage rates. It's because of rents.
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To keep a roof over your head, you cannot trade down. It's harder to do that unless you move or
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you get somebody else to move in with you. And that's why people are trading down at the grocery
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store. That's why I think it's the opposite of grief inflation happening. It's tougher to sell
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food to Canadians. There's no money to be made just selling food right now, unfortunately. But a lot of
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people don't want to believe it and will not want to believe it.
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That's why you've got so many stores that have the pharmacy on the inside or the dry cleaner or
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they want to have beer and wine on the shelves next to the food.
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That's right. And in the province of Quebec where I am, grocery stores right now are making a lot of
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me selling beer and wine. That's really what is helping their bottom line. In other provinces like
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Ontario, it's starting. But it's been very challenging just selling. The food business of
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the grocery business has been particularly challenging.
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So basically, profit margins on food are staying the same. They're stable, but they're not great.
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It's not good business right now. On the other hand, of course, as you know, Brian, I've been quite
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critical of criminal behavior. There's no, I don't think Canadians should tolerate companies breaking
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the law. I mean, there's no, there's a hard line there for sure. So as much as I believe that there
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is no greed or greed is difficult to measure in the first place, as much as I believe that some
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executives in Canada should have gone to jail by now. I mean, let's be honest.
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Well, let's talk about this then. You've got one of the players in the bread price fixing scheme
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admitting wrongdoing recently. Their parent company, Group Bimbo, owns Canada Bread now.
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Canada Bread admitted to on four different instances, working with Weston, which owned at
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that point both Loblaws and they had the, what was their bakery called?
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Yeah, it was George Weston Bakery, but I think it was, well, Canada Bread was, was, was with
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Maple Leaf, but I think it's mostly Wonder Bread is what the, the Westons produced.
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Yeah. They admitted that they fixed prices on at least four occasions. Now, Loblaws and Weston,
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they, they have not admitted publicly to what they're doing in the same way because they agreed
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to cooperate with the competition bureau. So they got immunity. So we don't know all the details,
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but Canada Bread admitted to price fixing with Weston on four occasions, all the other
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grocers, Empire Metro, um, I believe the giant tiger group, others, Walmart, they've all said,
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we have, you know, we didn't do anything wrong. We're not admitting to anything, but the investigation
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goes on. We're talking over the course of the years that this was going on. You, you believe
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that it was going on longer than what was admitted to in, in the court settlement. Um, how much did
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this hit the average family? The fact that the price of bread went up only pennies, only pennies
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per loaf, but pennies that it didn't have to go up. It was price fixing. Um, and it, you've done the
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calculation. What, what was the hit to the family budget?
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Yeah. So when, uh, when, uh, Loblaws and Western bakeries, uh, admitted guilt back in 2017, uh, in
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2018, we were asked about the accomplishment bureau to, uh, conduct an analysis on that particular
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point. Uh, how much, uh, did this, uh, allege price fixing scheme cost Canadians? And, and, and they
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also asked us whether or not it was possible that, uh, there was this scheme going on for 14 years. So,
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so to answer your question, Brian, we actually believe that the, uh, that the 14 years where
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we believe there was this price fixing scheme going on, it would have costs, uh, we believe it
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would have cost anywhere between $150 to $400, uh, per families for over 14 years. So, but.
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And so then you do your own calculation based on family size. If it's a bigger family, you probably
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paid more smaller family, less $400. That's not insignificant. It's not insignificant, but here's
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the, here's the challenge. Uh, you know, the, the, to me, the group of bimbo, um, and, and mission
1.00
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was incredibly important because all of a sudden you do link this scandal to, uh, the number one meat
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processor in the country, maple leaf foods. Uh, and they're not just, they weren't not just in
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bread. They're, they're in meat. And they, they, they was an email security recently in the media
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written by Michael McCain. I, I've, I've got a copy. You saw it. Yeah. You saw it. Uh, and, and there
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are comments about, about this one category, which is meat, which is a very important category for
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Canadians. And so what went on there? What was the price facing culture at maple leaf during those 14
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years? Exactly. And those are questions that are still pending. And I think Canadians deserve an
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answer. And to me, to me, there's, there's a big difference between coping with food costs or the
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cost to manufacture food, which is inflation. We've talked about that earlier versus breaking
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the law. And, and, and that part to me is so damaging to the food industry. We've been talking
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about, you know, attracting companies like Aldi and Little in Canada to come to Canada. Why would
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they ever invest in Canada when, when they see these headlines suggesting that there is this boys club,
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uh, working together on fixing prices? I mean, that's just not good for business.
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I want to read you the, the email that was sent. Um, it was from the person who was then the executive
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assistant. It was sent from her account, the executive assistant to Michael McCain, while he
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was president and CEO of Maple Leaf foods. And it was signed Michael. And in the email, it said,
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it described how, uh, McCain had met with a then executive, uh, uh, Metro grocery chain and that
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they discussed how to manage category profit up. And it said, consistent with the position that he took
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on the last bread price increase, his point of view, and it's a very vigorous point of view is that this
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is an acceptable strategy and they're aligned with it. Even in our meat categories, that's directly from
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the email. Now, Maple Leaf food says they've not been involved in any of this. In fact, they dispute
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why the new owners of Canada bread admitted to doing anything wrong. Metro says they did nothing
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wrong, but that's the email that the competition bureau has. And the competition bureau is now
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looking into, uh, all these other grocers and in their own statement, they said they're looking at
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Maple Leaf foods as well. Absolutely. So I do, I do question why the email was written in the first
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place. That's one thing. Cause I don't think I would put something like this on email. Uh, if,
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if I, if I intend to do something like this, but the plain reading of it is fixing prices. I mean,
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they, they can dispute it, but a reasonable person looking at that email would say, well,
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wait a minute. Um, they, they want to do with me what they did with bread. I have every reason to
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believe that, uh, that price fixing in Canada has been normalized in the grocery industry. Let me
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give you one other example in the fall, every fall, Brian, uh, grocers ask suppliers to freeze
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prices for three months between November and January around the holiday season. Uh, all grocers do the
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same thing. They call it the blackout period. You may have actually heard about this term, but the
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blackout period has been a practice for years. And the argument, uh, to support the blackout period
00:19:37.100
is that, well, it's the holiday season. It's very busy. Can't change prices of items, uh, on a daily
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basis. So let's freeze prices to make sure. But when you actually start thinking about how that practice
00:19:51.280
could impact retail prices, it is really, in my view, uh, a, a, a up the stream upstream collusion,
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really, because you're basically setting new market conditions that could severely impact
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retail prices in the end. And last fall, when Loblaw decided to freeze its prices, Metro came out
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saying, well, we do that every year. It's called the blackout period. And I go, and I went, you're
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actually admitting that you're colluding upstream. Is that what you're, is that what you're doing?
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And they actually backtracked and Loblaw denied, uh, the existence of blackout period. So again,
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I actually, and I've been in, I've been following this business for 25 years now. I do think that,
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uh, that the Canadian food in business has a price fixing problem overall.
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You know, it was, uh, interesting. I didn't know about the blackout period when Loblaw announced
00:20:52.840
their price freeze until January 31st of last year. And then later I was reading about the blackout
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period and how it always ends on January 31st. And I thought you guys weren't going to increase
00:21:08.460
prices anyway until January 31st. Exactly. Well, here's the thing. I mean, I know what happened
00:21:14.480
in October when, when Loblaw announced, uh, its price freeze as of, as of, uh, I think it was
00:21:19.940
October 17th up until January 21st, 30th. Metro was upset because it couldn't do, Metro is not Loblaw.
00:21:28.140
Loblaw is a massive organization. It has two private labels that are very well known, very strong
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private labels. Metro doesn't have any of that. So they got upset and they came out, uh, and said
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to media, well, this is something we all do by the way. And it came out wrong, but nobody, I felt nobody
00:21:48.940
picked up on that. I, I certainly did. I thought, well, geez, this is, this is a problem. You're now
00:21:54.740
normalizing price fixing. That's, that's what I heard. Oh my goodness. Okay. So we've got to take
00:22:04.820
a break and I'm exasperated already. We've been talking about price fixing, but there's also the
00:22:11.800
issue of competition. We just had the competition bureau release a report saying, uh, the government
00:22:18.140
needs to act to bring us more competition. I'd like them to act on price fixing first, but we'll talk
00:22:22.960
about what, if anything, the government can do, um, when we come back after this break.
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So a lack of competition or some say too much and an issue around price fixing. What can government do
00:23:05.280
to deal with this? Anything? Can anything be done? Uh, Sylvain, you've been studying this, as you said,
00:23:11.700
for about 25 years. This is the first time I remember the competition bureau really making a big stink about
00:23:18.000
something. And on, in any industry that, that, that, that's consumer facing. Um, and it's still
00:23:25.520
taken, what, six years, seven years. Um, is the competition bureau the right, is it set up properly
00:23:35.200
to deal with issues like price fixing or what more could the government do on that side?
00:23:39.240
Uh, you know, I, I think it lacks focus. Uh, I, we've actually had the pleasure to work with the
00:23:48.160
competition bureau on, on, on three occasions. The first one was the bread, it was on the bread
00:23:53.420
scandal. The second one was when, uh, empire bought a farm boy. And the third one was when, uh, empire
00:24:01.260
bought, uh, longos, uh, in Toronto. And so, and of course, every time we at, we are asked whether or not
00:24:09.040
this will compromise competition in, in, in the landscape. And so I actually do think that the
00:24:16.580
competition bureau biggest problem is not necessarily, uh, not having enough power or
00:24:21.960
authority. It's very much about focus and, and scope. So let me give you an example. So when we
00:24:27.780
actually had a chat about farm boy, we didn't see an issue because we thought that this could actually
00:24:34.680
leverage a good brand for the GTA because farm boy was very much in the Eastern part of Ontario.
00:24:42.380
So this could, it was an Ottawa store that, uh, when I moved back down to Toronto, I desperately
00:24:50.380
Exactly. So you, you got what you wish for, for sure. And, and, and that's exactly what's,
00:24:56.140
what's happening right now. Farm boy stores are opening up in different places, which is great.
00:25:00.000
I mean, it brings more competition. Uh, two years later, we are asked again to have a chat with the
00:25:05.660
bureau, uh, about, uh, about longos. And, and I, I, I kind of said to the bureau, you know,
00:25:13.600
this conversation about longos kind of changes our conversation that we had two years ago about
00:25:18.540
farm boy. Cause you're, you're seeing a second major independent grocer disappear.
00:25:24.420
Honestly, I don't think they understood what I was saying, uh, cause they kind of really,
00:25:31.460
they kind of took note and that's about it with this particular study this year, they came back
00:25:39.520
to us to talk about independent grocers. So I think Brian, you're reading this, right? It's the
00:25:45.060
first time really that the bureau really took the food industry very seriously and competition very
00:25:53.380
seriously. Now to see the competition bureau saying that we need more competition is a bit
00:25:58.480
of an oxymoron. Of course we all need competition. I mean, that's, but the, but the reality with Canada
00:26:04.780
is that we have a ill relationship with the concept of competition. We want crown corporations. We want
00:26:11.300
monopolies. We want consumers to be protected until prices become an issue. And then we expect government
00:26:17.800
to fix the problem and they can't. And so that's kind of the dilemma that we have in the United
00:26:24.040
States. There is a lot of collusion going on and, and we know that, but people go to jail and there's
00:26:30.020
lots of consolidation as well, but the commitment towards competition is pretty darn clear in, in the
00:26:38.120
U S I mean, people want competition in Canada. It depends. And that's why we're facing the dilemma
00:26:47.620
that we're facing right now when it comes to the role of the bureau itself. In their report, the,
00:26:53.700
um, uh, the competition bureau in the report on the need for greater competition did say that
00:27:02.060
international grocers may be holding off because it's pretty tough competition in the Canadian
00:27:08.760
marketplace already. Do you buy that? It's, I mean, you have oligopolies with only two players in
00:27:16.220
Canada. I mean, that's, uh, and we have five, uh, in Canada. You, you think it's, you, you think it's,
00:27:23.460
uh, we, we have five players in Canada. You got the big three plus Costco and Walmart. Okay. Those are
00:27:31.420
non Canadians, uh, Canadian firms, but there's still, there's, there's both Costco and Walmart are now
00:27:38.340
selling more food than Metro. So, uh, so they're significant players, but my, my, um, my take on
00:27:47.320
competition is, is pretty simple. Um, on the one side, make Canada more, more of an attractive market
00:27:54.380
to invest in. Cause right now it's not, it's, we have interprovincial barriers. Our fiscal policies are
00:28:01.120
pretty ridiculous, uh, rules between provinces change on labor immensely. I mean, look at the last
00:28:09.820
10 years we've lost. I mean, target came in and out overnight, almost, uh, Nonstrom left. We hardly
00:28:17.380
got to know exactly. And, um, you know, Lowe's left, uh, Sears left. I mean, it's tough to be a national
00:28:25.660
player. Walmart, when it came to, to Canada in 1994, when it bought Wolco, they didn't have like
00:28:34.360
400 stores. They actually started with like 20 stores and they gradually augmented their network
00:28:40.600
of stores learning about Canada. So they started in Ontario and then they got into Quebec and they
00:28:47.080
were really, really deliberately slow in deploying, uh, their strategy in Canada. And it paid off.
00:28:55.520
I mean, they understand Canada, but it takes time. It takes time. Do you think at Aldi and little
00:29:01.620
have the same patients? No, it's, it's, you, you, I was going to ask you about them. You know, my,
00:29:07.740
my family in Britain shops at Aldi, my family in Florida and Texas and California, they all shop at
00:29:14.080
Aldi. Aldi's in, uh, Australia. They're all over the place. They're across Western Europe. We don't
00:29:21.320
have them. Why? And people will say, well, we don't, we're not, we're not a big country. We're
00:29:26.060
only 40 million people. But the last time I checked, Australia has a smaller population and they do have
00:29:31.220
Aldi. So, so the one thing Canada can be made interesting, uh, it's just right now all each
0.81
00:29:40.880
province will have its own set of rules and it's really not helping. And the second thing, again,
00:29:46.560
going back to the bread scandal, these headlines aren't helping either. If you go to Australia,
00:29:53.200
they're very, very, they go after criminals very, very forcefully. So that's one thing.
00:29:57.780
The second thing, uh, I think the code of conduct is, is necessary. Uh, it's, it's something that's
00:30:04.120
been in the works for quite a few years. I've actually advocated in favor of the code of conduct.
00:30:08.940
I've actually helped the Bureau on, on this, on this issue as well. And in the code of conduct
00:30:14.800
for people who don't understand what it is, I'll keep it as simple as possible.
00:30:19.080
I know the scanning code of conduct, but is this one for the grocery industry instead of just the,
00:30:27.780
It's more for a supply chain discipline. Cause right now, Brian, if you're, um,
00:30:34.800
Lasson, if you're Pepsi, if you're, uh, Unilever, you get letters from grocers telling you, well,
00:30:42.220
tomorrow we're going to charge you more for listing fees, for marketing fees, for
00:30:46.460
unilaterally over the years, we've seen many decisions, uh, made by grocers and they can get
00:30:54.800
away with it because if you're, if you're, if you have a problem with say Loblaw, you have to
00:31:02.560
suck it up. I'm sorry to say, uh, but that's really how things work in the food industry.
00:31:08.460
You're at the mercy of, of grocers cause you need them to do business. And the code would offer a safe
00:31:17.120
place to go for everyone to resolve disputes. I'll give you one concrete example. Two companies in the
00:31:23.800
last two weeks have called me. They're being delisted by a grocer. I won't tell you which one
00:31:29.840
in six weeks. So in six weeks from now, they are gone. Okay. Think about that. So you have a company,
00:31:38.660
they're in the juice business, both of them. They bought their ingredients. They, they, they're,
00:31:44.000
they're using a lot of credit to get all the stuff they need to make juices, to make their beverages.
00:31:50.080
And now they're going to be stuck with all that inventory because they just lost their number one
00:31:55.480
customer. So I'm not disputing the delisting part. Grocers can do whatever they want. They can do
00:32:02.280
business with whoever they want. The six weeks though is completely cruel. And it could actually,
00:32:07.760
it could actually force both companies to go under within, within a month or two as a result.
00:32:13.740
So that's been the kind of things that, well, I've seen anyways, that should stop as soon as
00:32:19.740
possible. Do you think that, you know, this code or other measures could, you know, if the right
00:32:27.200
measures policies are taken could make Canada attractive to a Kroger, a Trader Joe's, an Aldi
00:32:34.000
to say, you know what, maybe we don't go across Canada, but maybe Trader Joe's, uh, sets up in
00:32:40.480
Vancouver instead of everyone going to the store just across, maybe Aldi starts going into
00:32:48.600
Well, Australia and the UK both have a code of conduct similar to what we're talking about
00:32:53.680
now. And so there, there, I think it would help. It would help because as, as a grocer,
00:33:01.260
let's say you're Aldi, uh, and you look at Canada, if you see that there, there is this existence
00:33:06.660
of a code, you know, for sure that Loblaws won't try to kill you. Cause I mean, it's, that's really
00:33:14.640
why I think the code could make the Canadian food landscape more competitive over time,
00:33:22.340
not overnight, over time. It will take probably about a decade.
00:33:26.820
Wow. In the meantime, what do you recommend for, for families who are looking at the ever
00:33:33.940
increasing cost of food? Cause that 9% food inflation isn't going away. Um, I, I learned to
00:33:40.700
shop from my mother back in the time when inflation was, uh, the last time inflation was a huge issue
00:33:45.700
in the early eighties, uh, shopping the specials, going around, doing all of that. Um, and I've
00:33:51.160
written columns on, on, on how to save money at the grocery store, but what, what do you say to
00:33:55.700
families frustrated with the price of food, the cost of it and, uh, in feeling helpless at, at the
00:34:03.560
thought of it, another trip to the grocery store? Well, I guess two things, uh, one consumers have
00:34:09.520
more power than they think. Uh, they can actually influence prices, uh, daily by, by, if something
00:34:16.780
show up at the grocery store and something is, is too expensive for your budget, chances are there's
00:34:22.980
some, there's a substitute in that same store that can do the, that can do the trick. And so,
00:34:27.980
and if, if, if you, if you recall that those, those five breasts of chicken, uh, that were
00:34:35.180
overpriced, uh, it was actually on Twitter a while back and people were upset. Well, guess
00:34:41.660
what? In the GTA the week after, uh, chicken breasts were 20% off because nobody was buying,
00:34:47.940
were buying them. So we have more power than we think really. Secondly, my biggest concern
00:34:54.940
about food affordability in Canada is not necessarily linked to food prices. It's actually,
00:35:00.580
uh, linked to, um, mortgage rates. I actually do believe that mortgage payments are absolutely
00:35:09.580
killing Canadian households right now. Uh, if you have a mortgage of 300,000, which is a modest
00:35:15.280
mortgage, uh, in Toronto, for example, Vancouver, I'm more to size over 25 years, you're basically
00:35:23.360
paying seven to $8,000 more just to keep a roof over your head, which is why people are spending
00:35:29.420
less at the grocery store, but there's so much compromise you can make at the grocery store.
00:35:35.000
So that's why I think we're reaching, we're slowly reaching a tipping point here when it
00:35:38.880
comes to food affordability. And, and that's why I actually do think I've been advocating.
00:35:44.380
I I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. I believe in wealth creation, but the one thing
00:35:50.080
that we have to recognize that capitalism hasn't been great in sharing wealth equally. And so that's
00:35:56.940
why I think we need to start thinking about, you know, a, a snap program out of Canada, uh, instead
00:36:03.700
of just sending out checks and grocery rebates and hoping for the best that's, it can just only make
00:36:09.700
things worse, unfortunately. So we need to be strategic about food affordability. And right now
00:36:13.720
I I'm afraid we're not. All right, Sylvain, thank you very much for your time. Wise words as always
00:36:20.120
listening to, uh, uh, to you. Um, and we'll, we'll talk again soon. I'm sure. Take care, Brian.
00:36:27.160
Full comment is a post-media podcast. My name's Brian Lilly, your host. This episode was produced
00:36:32.600
by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. You can subscribe
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