Last October, cabinet minister François-Philippe Champagne joined the CBC’s Rosemary Barton to discuss what the government billed as a series of new measures to stabilize the spiraling price of groceries. Even with this somewhat conservative framing onhand (“stabilizing” prices, it should go without saying, isn’t the same thing as actually lowering them) Champagne was remarkably evasive — repeatedly implying that the best solution to high grocery prices ultimately lay with consumers.

“If you ask me, what’s going to have the most impact,” he told Barton, “is really if we as consumers… where we decide to spend our dollars… that’s going to have the most impact on them [major grocery and supermarket chains] responding to the needs of Canadians.” A few moments later, the minister took this absurd premise even further, suggesting that the only real power the federal government has at its disposal with regard to inflated food costs was the ability to get supermarket giants on the phone: “Obviously we have soft power [as the] government because you call them and they come… but then it’s really an appeal to all the consumers out there, all of us, to say ‘listen, let’s watch each of them and let’s direct our dollars to the one that is giving us the best value for our money.’”

Barton, to her credit, wasn’t having it, replying with the question probably at the top of mind for many viewers: “Okay, but then why are you needed at all?”

  • @[email protected]
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    1824 days ago

    If someone was willing to bring Galen Jerky to the party I’d be there is a heart-beat. Even if it was teriyaki or honey garlic.

    Eat the rich, thinly sliced on Weston bread.

  • @psvrh
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    1624 days ago

    The word is “marginal tax rates”.

    Raise them. Raise them until the rich scream, then raise them some more.

  • Octospider
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    1524 days ago

    Poilieve’s campaign manager is an active lobbyist for Loblaws. Conservatives are way ahead in the polls.

    Things are going to go from unaffordable to starving.

  • @girlfreddyOP
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    1424 days ago

    Gotta love Rosemary Barton.

    Oh, and the castle is this.

  • @[email protected]
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    624 days ago

    “In the 1860s Queen Victoria used the property as a tea house and opened it to the public”

    Can we bring this back instead of letting a historic estate be owned by the Canadian Groccery Cartel?

    • FiveMacs
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      524 days ago

      I’d bring the snacks but I can’t afford them anymore.

  • pbjamm
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    221 days ago

    “We’ve tried nuthin’ man and we are all out of ideas!”

  • gimpchrist
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    223 days ago

    If we’re paying for it then it’s ours and we can stop by anytime