00:09:49.020Successive governments of different party stripes
00:09:51.440allowed that to happen even again here in ontario um where you know the majority of stores are
00:09:58.160independents but the two biggest wholesalers are sobeys and loblaws so if you're an independent
00:10:03.440in many areas of the province you're buying from your retail competitor that kind of situation
00:10:09.280should not have allowed been allowed to occur but putting that to one side i have to take issue with
00:10:16.640the um this this the accusations really about food profiteering gout price gouging everything
00:10:25.120uh again i hope your listeners believe me when i say uh we represent the independence we've got
00:10:31.680lots of issues with the chains but we are seeing the same uh cost increase from our suppliers
00:10:38.560that the chains are seeing there's a myriad of them and we don't point our fingers at the suppliers
00:10:43.360It would be very easy for me to come on and point my fingers at the big companies, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, but we don't do that here with the independents because we know what's driving up their costs.
00:10:59.260And the allegations about, as I said, profiteering and price gouging, a lot of that has to do with the fact that the retailer is the last point of contact in the supply chain for the consumer.
00:11:11.620So you sold it to me, you must be responsible. And people are forgetting just how many points of contact there are before that. And this has been looked at by the Competition Bureau of Canada in 2023. They did a retail market study of the industry.
00:11:30.680The all party, including the NDP, House of Commons Agriculture and Agri-Food Committee also looked at this issue.
00:11:38.440And Sylvain Charlebois, world-renowned Agri-Food Institute out of Dalhousie University.
00:11:44.660All three, looking at the evidence and the actual facts, all concluded there's absolutely no evidence of price gouging or extortion or anything along those lines.
00:11:58.080it's just it's just not it's just not accurate so uh but i i i recognize you know because
00:12:06.540consumers are so concerned about prices and rightly so we're all feeling that pinch but a lot
00:12:13.040of times i think it just comes down to the fact that the retailers the last point of contact in
00:12:18.920that supply chain so they become the focal point of attention for the consumer and if you're an
00:12:24.880independent grocer i would ask anyone who's listening if if you were an independent grocer
00:12:30.720and your margin's two percent that's that's to keep your lights on and and and do everything
00:12:36.440you want to do and you get a price increase from your suppliers that's double digit what do you do
00:12:42.940do you if you don't pass that on you're not going to be an independent grocer you're going to be an
00:12:49.280out of business grocer that's that's just that's just the the facts of the business and that's
00:12:54.700what any government run grocery store is going to be hit with the exact same set of circumstances
00:13:02.340somewhere the money's going to have to come to make that up some of your members that end up
00:13:10.540going broke if they have to compete against government-run stores right because whatever
00:13:15.540government runs it's always at a loss yeah that would be i would i would like to think that that
00:13:22.640would be an unintended consequence of of what they're proposing but that that is what you know
00:13:30.000they you know if if governments were going to come in and subsidize grocery stores um and they're not
00:13:38.000going to subsidize independent grocery stores yeah that puts them out of business and right off the
00:13:42.340top i noticed the city of toronto was saying even before they thought about uh where they would open
00:13:47.480them or or what the size of the store was we're going to waive all the property taxes any
00:13:52.320development charges anything else we're going to wave right off the top i'll tell you something
00:13:57.040it would be really great to hear the city and other governments talking about reducing those
00:14:03.140kind of charges if they can do it for their own stores why not do it for the independent grocery
00:14:07.760stores in canada and particularly in rural and remote areas i'd like to hear mr lewis put that
00:14:14.340forward as a proposal because the cost of getting food to rural and remote communities in canada
00:14:20.920is very high and it's more significant than in urban areas so the cost of food is higher in
00:14:28.000those areas why doesn't the government step in and lower you know property taxes and fees and
00:14:34.360anything else that you can for those independents in those areas and your members unfairly got hurt
00:14:41.520during the pandemic didn't they and that probably cost some businesses you know their ability to
00:14:47.840continue. We saw certainly in Ontario and other provinces where there was this decision made from
00:14:54.000on high at the government level that you could shop at a Costco, but you couldn't at a small
00:15:00.680grocery store or a convenience store. I mean, that must have hurt a lot of your members, which
00:15:06.720really probably only served to consolidate more of the market in the hands of the very few. Is
00:15:12.760that a fair statement? Well, in some respects, there were issues that arose during COVID that
00:15:20.200did hurt small businesses. Like one that's invisible to the consumer is there was a huge
00:15:25.920migration away from cash to contactless payments, if you will. That costs small businesses in Canada
00:15:35.800billions of dollars. And that shift has never really gone back to what it was before. So
00:15:41.420So I think, to be fair, there were other areas of other small businesses that were hit even more.
00:15:49.920But in the grocery sector, that was the biggest hit was actually the change in payment systems and the protocols and whatnot that we had to put in place to deal with COVID.
00:16:03.540Those are costs that were never recovered because they weren't offset by government.
00:16:07.220Do you intend to have a chat, maybe to reach out for your lobbying efforts to Mr. Lewis
00:16:15.100or perhaps Mayor Chow, maybe you've already done that, and try to explain the dynamics
00:16:21.000of doing business in Canada these days, not only in Canada but elsewhere, the margins
00:16:25.440that you have to deal with, and the fact that costs have to be passed on to the consumers
00:16:31.240because otherwise your members couldn't sustain their businesses.
00:16:35.620you couldn't stay open because they'd be losing money and rent-run stores could end up hurting
00:16:42.180because it'll kill competition not amongst the big boys probably but amongst the smaller outlets the
00:16:48.660independent business that's one of the things you're absolutely right that we want to convey
00:16:53.940to them because once those independents are gone they're gone they're not coming back um so you
00:17:01.460You know, government has to be very careful, and I use government in the broadest sense of the word, whether it's municipal, provincial, or federal.
00:17:09.020They need to do their due diligence on this.
00:17:12.760They need to, really, before they commit the taxpayers to subsidizing this kind of operation, they need to find out what's involved.