The House of Commons on Monday unanimously called for the Competition Bureau to investigate the profits of grocery store chains.
The New Democratic Party (NDP) motion also called for tougher penalties for price-fixing and tougher competition laws to prohibit companies from abusing “their dominant position in a market to exploit buyers or agricultural producers.
In an interview after the vote, the Deputy Leader of the NDP, Alexandre Boulerice, rejoiced at a “great victory” by having “forced” the Conservatives and the Liberals to “see the reality” and to “agree on solutions “.
“We have identified a problem that is real,” he said. Everyone on Thanksgiving was talking about the price of food, the cost of groceries, the hard choices people have to make with “seraphinflation” and the fact that big corporations are making record profits at the same time as people have to pay a lot more to eat. »
New Democrats want the government to tackle corporate “greed” in the grocery sector. The party also accused them of “greed” in the text of the motion, another portmanteau aimed at assigning them some of the blame for inflation.
The NDP has been on the grocers case for weeks. It was on his initiative that the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food decided two weeks ago that it would soon be looking at inflation in the food supply chain and the rising cost of groceries. In particular, it will examine the profits of large grocery chains in relation to employee wages and the cost of groceries in the country.
The big bosses of grocery chains will be invited to testify, as well as economists, unions and farmers.
“Clearly thanks to our efforts”
Earlier in the day, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh credited his party with the temporary price freeze announced by Loblaw on its No Name-branded products.
“It’s clearly thanks to our efforts that we forced the big grocery companies to assess their prices because we said we were going to investigate,” he boasted during a press conference. in parliament.
The example of Canada’s largest food retailer proves, he argued, that the NDP “is right” when its MPs holler over and over again that the big grocery chains have the power to “set or determine the price of food”, that the government must play a role in forcing them to reduce them and that an investigation is needed into how they are established.
Mr. Singh did not fail to recall that companies, including the three largest grocery store chains in Canada, had agreed for years to fix the price of bread, according to the Competition Bureau, who believed that they had behaved like criminals.
Mr. Singh, however, did not want to call Loblaw’s announcement a “victory” and even felt that it is “not enough” since the prices in question were frozen at “an inflation price”.
Early Monday, Loblaw announced it will freeze the prices of No Name brand products, more than 1,500 grocery items, through Jan. 31, explaining that food inflation is driving up grocery bills.
Loblaw President Galen G. Weston mentioned in a message that the price of an average basket of groceries has risen about 10% this year and said the price increases are generally reasonable and a result of the increase in basic costs for suppliers.
To those who think it’s a bit simple to point the finger at grocery chains when inflation is also forcing them to raise the wages they pay and pay more for the products they resell , Mr. Singh responds that producers and workers are not paid more.
“In this case where the workers did not receive a large increase in their wages, the producers also did not see a same increase in the money they receive […] with high profits from the big grocery companies and the big bonuses that the CEOs have received, it shows us that there is something going on,” he said.