A better way would be to create an online group of organizers to boycott Loblaws in strategic ways.

They tried to do similar things in the early 2000s when the price of gas was rising quickly and fluctuating all the time. It was a big deal at the time because before 2000, the price of gas seldom rose or fell and would only rise about a penny at a time every year or two. In northern Ontario, the price of gas at the time in 2000 was about 56 cents a litre. There were online groups in 2005-2010 who did their best to organize and make a big deal about price hikes that went from 56 cents to 66 cents to 90 cents then back down to 70 cents on a monthly basis … we had never seen that before and it was big shock to people at the time.

I remember friends of mine enthusiastically joining online groups to boycott companies because of a one cent rise in gas prices.

The price of gas was so stable decades ago that when I went to a small town in northern Ontario … near Timmins once and there was an old gas station from the 60s with a painted on (emphasis on ‘painted on’) sign that said gas was 44 cents a litre. It had stayed that way for years so there was never a need to change it. Sure there was a gas crunch in the 70s but after that period, gas went back to being pretty cheap after - not the same as before but still cheap.

The way they organized the 2000s gas boycotts was to organize everyone and get everyone participating in manipulating company profits by who and where they buy product. It didn’t matter who you boycotted, it mattered when and where you boycotted and for how long.

For example with the gas price boycotts … one month, everyone in a given group would all agree to just buy from Esso and completely boycott Shell. Then the next month, boycott Esso and just buy PetroCan … then next month boycott PetroCan and just buy Shell. It created pressure on companies because it would screw with their regular profits. One brand would dip for no reason one month, then rise again and then a few months later their profits would go down again.

It didn’t last very long but there were moments where boycotts like this in the big cities really affected company profits.

Then with Facebook and Twitter and other platforms, everything became a seething mess of information / disinformation / misinformation and infighting with everyone … part of it was from shills and company supporters … part of it was just human nature and people just not wanting to get along.

But for a brief moment at the time … it felt like it almost worked.