For more than nine months, we have been denouncing the shameless theft of the major grocery chains on the population, which is struggling to eat properly. The latest figures are overwhelming: food prices are at forty-year highs.
We repeat, the catastrophic impacts on low-income Quebec and Canadian households, even wage earners, are staggering: deprivation of meat, cheese, fruits and vegetables, food, etc. The corollary of this situation is an increase in the consumption of stuffy foods, such as pasta and rice, as well as junk food. Eventually, this will inevitably affect people’s health and even the economy in general, as consumers abandon other goods and focus more and more on the elements essential to their survival.
According to the author of the Annual report on food prices, Sylvain Charlebois, “50% increases in one month on several products are less and less rare”. In fact, a balanced grocery store costs 15% more than last year. He also expects a difficult start to the year 2023, “where prices could continue to rise sharply, like 2022”. Everywhere there is outcry and indignation in the face of this societal drama which is becoming widespread.
This indignation becomes revulsion when we learn that the instigators of this massacre are being rewarded by their shareholders, as a recent dispatch from The Canadian Press reveals. The profits of the big food chains having just made the largest profits in their history, due to the shareholding system, their managers are receiving stratospheric bonuses calculated in the millions for having propelled their profits into Himalayan dimensions. In short, we reward high-flying scammers.
This large-scale predation must be stopped. Solutions abound, more or less effective. First those of the government: the inflationary checks of $400 and $600 will only serve to barely relieve the increases in accommodation and communication and will in no way prevent the big chains from continuing to raise their prices. Then the reductions in government service fees, interesting leads that should be applied to the food sector.
Oxfam, in its report “The law of the richest”, has just proposed another ambitious solution, a tax on the profits of the richest and multinationals, all economic sectors combined. The figures put forward are dizzying: the members of the richest 1% of this world alone monopolize more wealth than 99% of the world’s population. The multinationals are not left out, with an increase of the double of their profits, of which 84% were returned to their shareholders, that is to say 257 billion dollars. Their suggested tax rate would be 60% on their annual income (against 31% today) and even 75% for the ultra-rich, to discourage them from this predatory bulimia.
The solution we proposed last June was to regulate the prices of a food basket of some forty basic products. Like some countries like France, which is negotiating with the big food companies to introduce an anti-inflation basket made up of around twenty basic necessities, we believe it is urgent that the Legault government regulate price increases. of these products and the excessive profit increases of these large grocery chains. The only guarantor of the common good, our government is the only social player in a position to prevent food from becoming a luxury product.
Oxfam’s solution requires an agreement between the leaders of all countries (competition between states obliges) to tax the super-profits of the ultra-rich so that they pay “their fair share” of the services offered. We support it because it would reduce the tax burden of all taxpayers by distributing state social spending more equitably. Ours, on the other hand, would allow the poorest among us, too poor to pay taxes, to finally eat their fill now and every day.