Food price increases driven by inflation were not isolated to Canada, but other countries handled this issue very differently.
Bester said the way the Mexican government handled major grocers in their country was more direct, and prevented prices on groceries from increasing as drastically as they did in Canada.
Last year, Mexico’s government signed an agreement to control the price of a number of “basic” foods — 24 items in the “bread basket” including pasteurised whole milk, basic cornflour, packaged bread, whole chicken, rice, vegetable oil, and canned sardines, set at a maximum price to 910 pesos (about $60CAN). Major retailers, including Walmart, agreed to the terms.
“The government really took more of a carrot and a stick approach to freezing the prices of a basket of goods, bringing grocers in and saying, basically, ‘this is the way it’s going to be,’” Bester said.
Macdonald noted that the UK also approached grocery price increases differently than Canada.
“They brought the big grocery stores together to offer sort of a set of basic products at lower prices for a kind of house brand,” Macdonald said. “You’ve got the cheap bread for a certain set amount, the cheap eggs for a certain set amount, that sort of thing.”
In 2023, Canada’s big grocery chains exceeded $6 billion in profits — an increase of eight per cent from the previous year, according to the Centre for Future Work. The data found food retailers are now making more than twice as much profit as they did before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Road to hell is almost always paved with “good intentions”. Then some fuck comes around and twists/corrupts the whole idea.
I’m in Southern Ontario. Where can I shop? We have a farmer’s market and butchers, but there’s stuff I need that they won’t have. I was shopping at Metro, because Canadian, but like… why does everyone have to be evil?
They’re capitalists.
You don’t get to be the size of Metro without being a selfish, greedy, asshole. Aka, a capitalist.
If you have a Cooperative in your area, support them. At least the profits get shared back to the members.
that last bit really says it all:
The data found food retailers are now making more than twice as much profit as they did before the COVID-19 pandemic
This is why shoplifting doesn’t exist. If the stores can pick your pockets, you can take from them too.
Never stole a thing in my life before 2022. Would never have even considered it. Now? I think of it as a class-conscious thing to do at a supermarket.
I just graze liberally at the reassuringly expensive olive bar as payment for apparently working the checkout against my will.
Fuck Sobey’s with an artichoke.
They bought Thrifty Foods here on the west coast and the purchasing became less local, staffing policies got shittier, pricing got worse, and it generally just fell into boycott territory for me.
The locally based grocery chain that remains here is pretty good so we still have that, but choice vanished, thanks capitalism.
Which is the locally based grocery chain in BC? The island has the Market Stores which are nice, but wondering about other alternatives.
IGA (specific to BC)
Country Grocer
The Liberals play with fire ignoring CoL things like this when it comes to the future youth vote.
Before you start blasting the new liberal government, give them a chance. Carney has done more since he stepped in to the role of prime minister since March 14, than he should have been expected to do. But he’s doing it. He’s dealing with shit that’s not just national, but GLOBAL. Canadians are not alone in the issues of housing, healthcare, food prices, etc. As far as I’m concerned, the global issue is oligarchy. There’s a secondary issue with the rise of fascism/nazism (a lack of history education, perhaps?) I can guarantee Carney won’t be handing out doughnuts and coffee to racists and Nazis…
It’s not me you have to convince. My age group didn’t lean conservative in this election.
What is your age group? And what is your education level?
The rise of fascism has nothing to do with our ignorance of history, but with the success of the fascists in convincing the general public that what they are doing is not fascism. Those who control the label, control the information flow.
Hence, education. They don’t understand fascism because they haven’t been educated about fascism. It’s spreading across the globe and too many people seem oblivious. Perhaps history would be helpful? WWII? Those who are controlling the label are able to do so, because they control the education, or lack thereof: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fascism+definition&ia=web
One does not really have to go any further than the Roman Catholic (Empire) Church to see the proliferation of fascism in action, and also to see the tremendous effort to re-define fascism so that it does NOT apply to what the Empire has done in the past, and in fact many facets in it are still doing. Although the last Pope seemed to be trying to get the Empire away from operating in that mode, and we will see what the new Pope does.
My personal take is that the spread of fascism is being prompted by a particularly well organized institution that is co-coordinating a lot of the events that are feeding the fascist goals, and it is managing to stay below the radar simply because the news media refuses to call it for what it is. But the events are too well orchestrated, too well co-ordinated, too well funded, and too contiguous not to be planned by some central authority.
It’s not that well orchestrated. It’s a LACK of education. The happiest countries in the world are also the most educated.
The spread of fascism is being spread because oligarchs own the news. They own the newspapers, and they own the TV news. This was part of Mark Carney’s platform. He would support the CBC. Free news. Maybe the last FREE news in Canada. If your personal take is that the spread of fascism is being promoted by a particularly well organized institution, then maybe stop talking about it, and start fighting against it!
More Western news media are owned and controlled by religions than oligarchs. CBC stands for China Bashing Corporation.
The only way to stop the spread of fascism and to fight it IS to talk about it and to make people aware of it. We couldn’t stop it when I was a student in the 80’s, no matter what level the protest, and we can not stop it now. We can only make people aware of it.
OMG! CBC stands for Canadian Broadcasting System. It’s Canada’s free news reporting system. NOT owned by oligarchs. Do you even understand what free reporting means?
of COURSE you are from shit.just.shit
In Canada the gov doesn’t control prices. They can investigate and … oh, like they’re doing now.
Try again, Polievre.
I’m very obviously not conservative, don’t strawman critical opinion. I voted Carney. I just see the youth getting fed up and think we’re fucked the same as the USA in 4 years if nothing is done about cost of living. Whether it can be managed or not. We have the same culture rot and decades of decline.
Switches to farmer’s markets and small grocers harder
The government can just raise taxes instead of printing 40% additional money supply, to avoid these price spikes where we are then trying to attribute blame.
In the 70s they blamed unions for asking for higher wages when they debased the currency by moving to USD and then off the gold standard, its always externalized by the government to avoid blame. Here’s a newspaper from the time of the union complaining about wage controls.
https://cupe.ca/sites/default/files/journal_winter_1976_p1.jpg
I also find it funny Tiff Macklem egging people on telling people to go and borrow, which is unheard of talk from a central bank, and then we miraculously had greedflation.
Its a bit before my time, rhanks for sharing! Seems like the old addage “a sucker is born every minute” is alive and flourishing. People are arguing Libs vs Cons when its basically a few levers they can pull while the unseen arm of capitalism moves along. all the politicians and their cronies seem to take the lions share whike we squabble… Media should be more accountable and tell us rubes when we’re being bamboozled
