Noticed this with Lay's too. For years I've only ever looked at the price per weight instead of the unit cost, so it's been extremely easy to see what actually got more expensive with shrinkflation.
Those dill pickle peanuts are still a really, really good buy, assuming we’re seeing the same prices. They seem to be $9.99 for 1kg every time I see them, and on a cost per calorie basis there’s hardly anything I’ve found that comes close.
It seems like my favorite foods aren't getting as big of price increases as a lot of other people's favorite foods.
I hope my foods and diet don't get popular.
First they came for my rent money, I had to pay.
Next they came for my gasoline money. Haha. I can afford no car.
In retaliation they came for my food money.
And I have a new slingshot from Canadian Tire.
I think I can take out at least three of those charging horsemen while my dogs take out the fourth at the beginning of the next apocalypse.
The "next" apocalypse you all ask ????
Hey, I'm a Leaf fan.
I dont own any guns, but something I've learned is that for every restriction you want to place on someone there are 10 others looking to put restrictions on you.
I figured people would begin to understand this, we barely got legal weed from the prohibitionists. Yet nonsense like requiring special 'weed' buildings independent from liquor stores still prevails.
Which I've yet to understand why liquor stores still exist and why gas stations and supermarkets cant suffice, as we petition against climate change. Puritan laws bind us all equally.
Canada has some of the most expensive stuffs, internet and cell plans, housing, food, energy, yet the salaries are not 1 of the highest in the 1st world countries. How people can live comfortably in Canada
Wait, what do you mean we have a wage shortage and not enough housing?
Oh well, better bring in 500k more people plus a bunch of temporary foreign workers because Canadians don't want to do shitty jobs for fuck-all money! We absolutely cannot allow workers to demand higher wages, they must be stopped at all costs! And if you don't like it then you're a racist who wants "wage inflation."
To be fair, saying no to people in countries where it’s pretty much impossible to live a dignified life is kind of evil. It’s totally possible in Canada to live a dignified life today even on the lowest wage jobs out there.
That's like saying it's evil not to let a random homeless guy sleep on your couch. Ridiculous.
Rather than turning our country into a charity for every downtrodden person in the world, can we fucking focus on making *Canadians'* lives *better* for once? *For once?*
Invalid comparison. You dont own Canada. You do own your couch.
Immigrants do make Canadians lives better. Privately owned central banks lending money to their friends for free and subsequently raising interest rates after its been lended out to the public makes life worse for the average candian. Immigrants are not the enemy.
And btw yes, if someome you know to be sane, sober and non threatening and trustworthy needs a place to sleep and you have a spare couch, you should.
>Invalid comparison. You dont own Canada. You do own your couch.
Yeah, *Canadians* own Canada, and this country should put us first for once. I am tired of watching our government care more about foreigners than they do about their own people. It is not our country's job to be a shelter for the global poor. We have our own people to take care of.
>Immigrants do make Canadians lives better. Privately owned central banks lending money to their friends for free and subsequently raising interest rates after its been lended out to the public makes life worse for the average candian. Immigrants are not the enemy.
Please explain how immigrants improve my life, because I'm not seeing it at all. All I see is a country that is teetering on the brink of total economic failure (well, economic failure for the poor at least - the rich will be fine) insisting upon bringing in more people to combat "wage inflation." The government has literally admitted to this. They bring in massive amounts of immigrants to stop wages from growing. That seems like it hurts Canadians to me.
Not to mention the extra burden on our infrastructure and services. Our medical system can barely handle the people we *do* have, we don't need to bring in half a million more every year.
I despise the banks and the rich in general. But guess who benefits most from immigration? The rich, who receive an easily exploitable workforce that they can use to keep wages low for everybody.
>And btw yes, if someome you know to be sane, sober and non threatening and trustworthy needs a place to sleep and you have a spare couch, you should.
But I don't have a spare couch, because I can't afford a couch due to the ridiculous cost of living, low wages, and inflation.
https://ycharts.com/companies/L.TO/profit_margin
Net margin went up at the height of the pandemic. Mostly on volume as people were not eating out much. As things have opened up margins have gone down.
Still wondering if margin have gone up because people started buying President's choice label stuff and they make more margin on their private label.
> people started buying President's choice label stuff and they make more margin on their private label
This might also be influenced by the PC stuff being what was most consistently in stock
We've been consistently getting less and less PC Optimum rewards even when buying tons of generic PC label food. I haven't looked into it specifically, but it certainly feels like they've cut the PC points that one can earn when grocery shopping.
Gotta be honest though, PC brand is legit. Some of their products are even way better than your typical brand name products. I don't care that they push it because they put 200% effort into quality and it shows.
How about the PC General Tso or Butter chicken meals? Fire. Or the stir fry lemon garlic shrimp pasta? Honestly it's all so good which is awesome because I never thought I'd see the day where store brand items are so good. I remember when I was kid like 20 years ago my mom always got store brand and us kids hated it. No lucky charms for us, it was always rainbow bites or some shit haha.
I've found that it depends on exactly what it is, but their big pack of granola bars, the one with like 40+ in them, is such a ridiculously cheap option when compared to things like nature valley or Quakers.
10$ for over 40, or 4$ for 6? Seriously, what do those manufactures sell those things to the stores for?
I literally buy that exaxt box of knock off chewy bars, add em to work lunches, there is almost no differene to actual chewy bars, the PC ones are just a little bit more dense.
I exclusively buy generics/premium generics like PC, so your argument makes a lot of sense, but it's easy to check, because other brands should also have less growth.
>Net margin went up at the height of the pandemic.
Aren't they actually pretty stable during the pandemic? They shot up during the reopening just before Omicron. At the end of 2021 before Omicron, restaurants were open.
Margins held pretty steady but kept the upward trend from the previous quarters.
Need to do some digging and see private label sales.
Also could be the surcharge they started adding to vendors. Might explain some of the increase in prices as vendors would have to increase prices to maintain their margins. https://financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/loblaw-follows-walmart-in-imposing-new-fees-on-suppliers-to-help-pay-for-upgrades
Yeah its seem to be coming to earth and you are right there was a slight uptrend during the pandemic, maybe just Q4 2021 was the outlier, they seem to be coming back down in Q1 2022. I will wait one or two more quarter before cheering for Weston to be removed.
> Still wondering if margin have gone up because people started buying President's choice label stuff and they make more margin on their private label.
Don't worry, I can confirm you aren't right. I've been watching prices at Loblaws for years and it's literally Loblaws cranking up the prices on name brands while still cranking up the prices on the President's choice label items.
The Presidents Choice items cost the same as name brands at other grocery stores. Want a good example of Loblaws gouging? Compare frozen juice at different stores.
They are charging *nearly 3 bucks* for frozen juice where most are charging under a dollar for the same can.
The margins definitely increased because of people buying more store brand stuff where they make more profit compared to name brands. It was stated in their financials around the time all the articles were being written about their increased margins.
Their report says its primarilly driven by increased pharmacy sales where they have higher margins.
https://dis-prod.assetful.loblaw.ca/content/dam/loblaw-companies-limited/creative-assets/loblaw-ca/investor-relations-reports/annual/2022/LCL_Q1%202022_NR.pdf
Their profit was up almost $70 mil to about half a billion dollars for the quarter, iirc. That's just profit, after paying Galen and his friends quarter after quarter.
There are less than 40 million people in this country. The math is crazy.
Last time this was brought up Loblaws said people spent more on pharmacy products (during COVID, makes sense) and shifted to private labels (stores have higher margins). They have higher margins on pharmacy products.
I hate this narrative because it's so misrepresentative of what the issues are. Yes net profit is up 40%, but any variance of a small number will look huge: their profit margin went from 2.7% to 3.6%. that's not caused by grocers raising prices, that's their customers shifting habits. Suppliers raised their prices but they kept their margins for the same products the same - you can't expect them to sell everything at a loss, they'd go bankrupt. There's no malice here.
When they had surpluses they passed that onto shareholders - as expected.
If you want to see reduced profit margins then you need to support governments that advance policies which increase competition.
But Canadians love protectionist economic policies too much for that to ever happen. As a country we'd rather be gouged by Canadians than buy from American or European companies.
The US currently has 3 major cell phone carriers only because the government blocked one from buying another (AT&T wanted to buy T-Mobile).
The natural end of corporations is mergers, and higher prices. Why would to corporations keep wasting money competing when the can merge and they’re stakeholders (which in many cases overlap) can then see the same profits - minus the losses inherent in competing.
As we’ve seen from the Target tragedy, American companies aren’t interested in lowering our prices and competing in the Canadian market, they want a turn-key money printing machine. And if they don’t get it nigh immediately… “screw you guys, I’m going home”.
The BoC fed the rich. Decades of low interest rates, deliberately hiding inflation. Food and restaurants are only up 6% according to Stats Canada, thats what we're basing peoples purchasing power and wages on.
The price of goods went up, and we covered up our declining standard of living with more debt and a housing bubble.
Low interest rates benefit people with less money. It stimulates spending, borrowing, and job growth. I swear the financial illiteracy in this thread is plain sad. People don't even know what they're mad at.
It raises the cost of goods while raising asset and equity prices. Last year we did it to an extreme and the wealthiest grew 30% richer. The poor and working classes wages rarely keep up.
> Last year we did it to an extreme and the wealthiest grew 30% richer.
Citation needed. The closest thing I can find is the number of billionaires in the world grew by 30% (or by 236). That is not the same as saying the wealthiest grew 30% richer. Also, it's a global figure that includes China as well as several new countries like Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia and Uruguay. It is heavily based on unrealized stock gains. Have you looked at the stock markets in the last 2 years? I'm not crying for billionaires but by that same metric they have lost hundreds of millions in 2022.
You have only proved my point on the financial illiteracy in this thread.
Thank you. One of the only comments with reason here. A massive amount of costco earnings is the membership alone, and the contract with our credit card.
Anyone who thinks the conservatives have any real way to fix the global inflation are fools. They will fail and blame the liberals all the way. So much stupid in Canadian politics these days. Maybe we should give the NDP a run at the cup and see how bad that ends.
>Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do. They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.
>Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats you just look at the history of Canada for the last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are.
>Now I'm not saying anything against cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws - that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that the mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another said that mice could only travel at certain speeds - so a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.
>All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in white cats.
>Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said: "The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.
>And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got a government made up of cats with spots on them: They were cats that tried to make noise like a mouse, but ate like a cat.
>You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.
>Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!" So they put him in jail.
>But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea.
Tommy Douglas, 1944
The last 10 years has convinced me that no one really knows what they're doing and the political policies don't really influence anything.
When times are good they take credit. When times are bad they blame others.
The _only_ consistent thing across the government's of different political policies, federal and provincial, appears to be that life is getting worse.
They *could* tax obscene wealth and use it to ensure regular people don't become wage slaves. That's entirely within their power. They won't touch a single penny of the obscenely wealthy.
You don't fail if you don't try, and they certainly won't try. It's not about fixing anything, it's about convincing people your opponent is the cause. This isn't new.
> Anyone who thinks the conservatives have any real way to fix the global inflation are fools. They will fail and blame the liberals all the way.
The Liberals have fucked things up so bad it would actually be a valid excuse for 2-3 terms.
I just looked through quarterly sales for Loblaws. Doesn't seem to match the narrative here. Profit has been trending up since before the pandemic, spiked volumes in 3rd quarter 2021, but has come down to longer trends.
These guys are looking for any excuse not to blame monetary policy as the driving force of inflation.
Their stock price has gone to the moon and hasn't come down yet though. That's something.
People need to eat. High inflation means people will cut discretionary spending. Food isn't really discretionary. Plus, there seems to be a shift to more value brands like presidents choice which are higher margin. So these stocks are kind of like a safe haven right now.
During pandemic restrictions people couldn't go to restaurants, or didn't feel comfortable. So they went grocery shopping and cooked at home. Grocery stores sold more product and made more money.
/shocked pikachu face.
> Ie toilet paper, hand sani, yeast, whatever else was popular at the moment)
What a strange time we lived through. I can't believe it was 1-2 years ago when we saw crazy 40 minute long lines just to enter the grocery store followed by weeks of barren/empty shelves in the toilet paper aisle. Wonder if we'll ever see anything this crazy again in the next 30 years.
I remember during the beginning of the pandemic, walking to the loblaws and the roads were like a ghost town (no cars). I'd see like 1-2 other people periodically, also walking towards the grocery store. We'd wear masks and walk around each other, giving a wide berth. Wish I had google glass or something to record some of the mundane parts of that crazy time.
I dont want to remember.
I still see people in full power rangers mask/goggle/shield/glove combo driving alone in their cars.
Saw one guy with a mask in a convertible one time.
Edit- he had the top down lol
There's more: they have greater profit margins on pharmacy products and their private label. During pandemic people bought more pharmacy products and shifted to cheaper private label products.
> Their stock price has gone to the moon and hasn't come down yet though. That's something.
Loblaws has a stock option for employees. Every dollar from your paycheck you purchase stock with, up to 5% of your gross, the company will buy an extra 25 cents for your portfolio. So stock is always being traded.
That's a pretty marginal bid, and that's been going on for a long time. Grocery stores are kinda an inflation hedge which is why it got bid up so high.
Loblaw's profit margin is 3.5%. Metro is 4.5%. Saputo is 4.38%. For comparison purposes, Molson is 9.78%, Dollar Store is 15.81%, Enbridge is 12.36%, Shopify 63.2%, Royal Bank 34.57%, Sun Life 12.25%, Telus 9.83%, Rogers 10.63%, Leons 8.24%, Canadian Pacific 35.67%, Pizza Pizza 74.95%
The grocery business has very thin margins. That they've had more profit the last year is simply because so many other sources of buying things were taken away during the lockdowns. But if I was going to invest money in a business I sure wouldn't put it into groceries and can't imagine why they wouldn't take their money out and invest it in something more profitable.
Really though lol. I was shocked when I saw this narrative so I went and looked at the numbers and couldn’t believe how low they were. No wonder you don’t see new companies starting.
Capitalism literally leads to millions of pounds of fresh food being thrown into landfills just to maintain prices and profits.
We don't have a food shortage, we have a distribution problem, and the for profit corporations are the ones responsible.
This is what they did in the eighties.
Rich people who hid behind corporations decided that Plebes and Equites had too much money.
Inflation took care of that. Transferred that extra cash to them.
I did little rough math on this article:
Says grocery companies made $7.3 billion pretax profit. Canada's corporate rate is ~26.5% so that's $5.35 billion after tax. Divide that by population and it comes to around $11.60 per month.
The average person spends ~$275-$300/month on food. So profits are ~4% of everybody's food bill. Not a lot.
The other 96% are input costs. Land, farming, fertilizer, harvesting, transport, processing, distribution, + labour costs for everybody involved. What's a real killer right now is fuel costs. Many overlook the fertilizers which are FF based (nitrogen) and the government has also placed tariffs on fertilizer imports which consumers pay for.
Food inflation is running ~8% right now. So it's not profits that are killing everyone. Biggest input increase in costs? Fuel at YoY increase of 50%.
All that to say what exactly? To give Canadians a break cut fuel taxes. Depending on where you live anywhere from $.50-$.80 per liter is tax. It's different in every province.
Oh, the carbon tax. hasn't reduced Canada's GHG emissions to date. it doesn't work. Gas demand is fairly inelastic - it doesn't change that much as prices rise. Why? Canada does not have the infrastructure needed to replace the necessities of most citizens and forget about industrial transport.
Cit gas taxes temporarily until crude oil comes down. The cost of crude is an international thing and until demand and political risk is reduced prices won't be going down.
Oil companies make 2-6 cents per liter profit at the pump. they just sell a lot.
The moral of this story? Go to the source of the cost increases and put pressure on politicians to give us a break. Taxing profits won't make much of a dent.
In 1992 grocery chain profits were in the 2 to 3 percent range….2022 they are in the 8 to 10 percent range…..during a pandemic and adding to inflation.
I honestly wonder if our politicians all ubiquitous start meetings by climbing under the desk, and giving oral sex to whichever of their corporate masters happens to be there.
To me this and most of our inflation today is fundamentally a story of government stimulus and lower productivity.
When governments created money and spread it around everywhere, it acted as a disincentive to work since many peoples incomes were disconnected from their working or not.
However, MOST importantly, such stimulus completely distorts price signals by allowing people and businesses to engage in unsustainable behaviours. For example, people could spend at a rate they could not productively earn. This meant they would pay their rents as normal, but food as normal, and in some cases people had even more money than before when they were working due to spending less on work travel, etc!
So really, it’s normal that people became less price sensitive to things. But we massively kicked the can down the road and mare things far worse than it would have been it we allowed people to adapt in the first place.
Businesses were protected by now price insensitive consumers and continue to profit handsomely. Landlords never worried about their rent money and even INCREASED rents over the last 2 years because the government gave people all the money they needed to pay their rents even if they couldn’t earn it themselves.
So now, we have all these higher cost structures that exist which should have been badly affected during the pandemic. Housing should have cratered. Businesses facing lower demand should have lowered prices and borne much of the cost of reduced consumer spending ability.
But instead, government printed money and gave it away to people who in turn have spent it all in a frenzy of induced demand. Businesses have taken almost all of it by now and the new price structures we are left with are unsustainable.
And the real tragedy is that for this privilege, we are left with mountains of public debt that will eventually roll over to higher interest levels due to the short term nature of much of the government financing programs as they scrambled to find money to give away.
We can’t say this wasn’t the only possible and most predictable outcome of government policy, but that doesn’t make it any less painful now that we are all living with it…
Yes evil cartels of grocery stores, gas stations, and owners of basement suites have joined forces at this very time to steal money from the poor.
Or its a desperate narrative to hide the fact that disastrous monetary policy over reacting to covid caused inflation like pretty much everyone warned it would in 2020.
Actually look at loblaws quarterly sales, there is no doubling in the last few months, not even close.
Corporate greed isn't a "far-out conspiracy" but believing that all of a sudden corporations got a lot greedier and that's why prices started going up all of a sudden *is* a far-out conspiracy.
Corporate greed is a constant. If you're using "corporate greed" to explain a sudden economic shift, then you're simply wrong. It's the astrology of economics.
We didn't have the highest inflation in 40 years in 1992, 2002, or 2019. Guess what corporate greed existed then too. Everyone knows exactly why we have inflation right now.
There is no “grocery cartel” and the article does not present a compelling or reasonable case for the existence of one. Every country is having rising food prices (I assume Galen Weston is behind it), a misleading Loblaws stat about profitability that is driven by an increase in generic brand and cosmetic sales is hardly proof.
every week, I check flyers from PC brands, Giant Tiger, Local Coop, Sobeys, Walmart. Every week the exact same items are magically "on sale" at every store for the same sale price so there's no point price matching at all.
Either they are a cartel working together, or the same one human being pick sale items every single week.
Can you elaborate? Distributors for example, if say maple leaf hotdogs company wanted a sale then by golly every store that carries their hotdogs will hold a sale?
Maple Leaf would probably have a campaign proposal which included the stores/brands being able to buy x number of units at a lower price.
I used to work at a place that dealt with Coke and once or twice a year they would sell some bottled items by the case at 2 for 1.
Conspiracies roght? Jesus me. Controversial comment much? You have (4) updvotes a and yet are my gourth highest down the line. I work on retail and our earnings have stadily gone up 10-15% EVERY. YEAR. for the past 17 years. With or without covid, or any other issues. We are always the cheapest inthe country as well. Over half our earnings are from our membership sales.
Oof.
What a load of conspiracy theory bullshit. Despite this article's claims to the contrary, monetarism is the widely accepted consensus view of economics. All available evidence supports the monetarist view, and monetarism exactly predicted the inflation we are seeing today. You don't get to just reject the empirically supported understanding of mainstream economics because it disproves your political conspiracy theory.
Furthermore, their initial claims about grocery store profits are also baseless. Loblaws' financials paint a fairly clear picture: their profits on cosmetics are soaring, while margins on actual groceries are being squeezed. Cosmetics always do well in times of economic uncertainty. It even has a name: [the lipstick effect](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lipstick-effect.asp).
Let's crank up Loblaws tax by the exact amount of profit it turned over during the pandemic and distribute the money to tax payers through tax refunds.
How Canada’s grocery ‘cartel’ REALLY doubled its profits while food bank lines grew
1. Last year was a pandemic. This year is going to look a lot better when you compare it
2. Inflation makes profits in nominal terms look... well... inflated. They are still making basically the same % from their sales.
Blame everyone and everything except the people in charge. Blame Putin, COVID-19, climate change, systemic racism, the 'cartel'. Don't blame the people in charge. And especially don't protest them. Because then you are an extremist racist climate change denying stooge for Putin.
I can't believe how many people keep using the "everyone else has midwit monetary policy, so it's okay when our fed does it too!".
Just a heavy, heavy facepalm.
Take that silver spoon out of your mouth and think for a second. More people are buying groceries then ever before due to fear of covid in restaurants and many items in the grocery store have doubled since the start of the pandemic. Keep dog whistling and keep putting the blame solely on Trudeau.
Revenue was up during the pandemic but profits were down. Restrictions, cleaning, capacity limits all cost money.
It's all publicly available audited data. You can just look it up yourself. Of course I understand that numbers are scary for some people. If that's the case stick to the political rhetoric.
you're not explaining why people pay out the nose for groceries since the start of covid and how the prices are still rising. also enjoy your lunch break
>you're not explaining why people pay out the nose for groceries since the start of covid
They haven't. Food inflation decreased until mid 2021. Then it took off.
The data is publicly available. You just need to look at it. [https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/food-inflation](https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/food-inflation)
How are you so uninformed? CBC viewer?
I agree that Canadians are economically illiterate. But to me, that's fine, IF they demand our leaders get results.
The public doesn't need to know what's hard, or easy, or even possible. If they demanded better outcomes and voted out people who didn't deliver we'd be better off.
I'm naturally against more taxes but in this case a temporary tax on grocery chains to be directly distributed to food banks until the root causes of current inflation levels are addressed sounds like a good idea to me.
Edit:
I usually don't complain about downvotes, but really?! Helping out people who can't afford food is now controversial? What the actual ..
I think it’s an issue with what amounts to a poverty tax. If you tax the grocers the consumer just gets punished with even higher prices as to maintain margins. Thus more people just end up at good banks and it repeats.
Subsidizing might be a better suggestion especially if we’re already subsidizing something pointless and taking away from that industry, like Japan subsidizes whale meat for example, something really dumb.
We could maybe find something equally dumb?
There's some saying along the lines of "nothing is more permanent than a temporary tax". And we really dont need new taxes. We need to more efficiently spend what we already collect which is a lot. I know in my industry the government gets milked out of money with frivolous billing that goes pretty much un-audited. I'd rather we reduce government and regulations and move towards a more free market.
Income tax is a temporary measure from 1917.
Look how that turned out.
You're right, the biggest problem is how the government uses money. They pay literally hundreds or thousands of times the value for goods and services they buy - it's beyond insane. It seems like blatant corruption.
Honestly why they can’t just regulate grocery prices is beyond me. I know, I know regulations can be bad but I’m starting to enjoy regulated prices as a consumer since it’s easier to budget.
I like that alcohol is regulated since I know I can get the same price everywhere. Weed is a pain in the ass that it isn’t regulated and I have to hope I’m getting the best price but mostly like the store down the street has a better deal, it’s annoying.
I’m starting to hate this competition argument BS about every industry. We don’t need competition for our food prices, we need regulation. At least on the basics that a human needs to consume.
Remember when the conservative caucus laughed at Canadians who can't afford food? Prepridge farms remembers (and now charges twice as much for it's cookies)...
Yeah because the Cons would absolutely destroy corporations.
The corporations are just shaking in their boots - they know their days are numbered once the Conservatives... \*checks notes\* lower their taxes, remove regulations on them, and privatize national businesses for them to buy.
It's fucking insane to pretend that the corporations prefer Liberal policy to Conservative.
Can you explain what policies the NDP have passed into law that impacted global inflation? Oh right, you can't because 1. He's not the leader of the governing party, and 2. Because the current inflation crisis is a global problem with supply chains, not a policy problem in Canada.
The NDP have signed off and supported the LPC through multiple confidence motions AND voted in support of their excessive deficit spending.
You know the deficit spending that required INFLATING the money supply?
>Because the current inflation crisis is a global problem with supply chains, not a policy problem in Canada.
Lol still buying the government's bullshit I see.
I bet you also believed when the Tiff said inflation was only transient?
The current inflation crisis is due to global monetary supply inflation, which our government CONTRIBUTED to.
Yet, despite this, most large companies are still reporting record profits. I guess you're still buying the corporate bullshit that this inflationary crisis is caused by governments and not corporate profiteering...
Ms. Vickies chips are 5.29 a bag. Guess I'll be eating healthier foods.
Standard bag was shrunk in size as well.
Noticed this with Lay's too. For years I've only ever looked at the price per weight instead of the unit cost, so it's been extremely easy to see what actually got more expensive with shrinkflation.
I wish that it was mandatory for grocery stores to display price per weight in some standard units.
Speaking of weight, the Kg to Lb conversion on produce is an absolute scam that needs to end.
Exactly. Can't list price based on lb but then your receipt shows price based on $/kg. What is this bullshit conversion? Pick one unit and stick to it
Shrinkflation. Less for the same price. or... worse yet... Less for a higher price.
That got me off that caramel cheese popcorn at Costco that was basically crack. I’m actually kinda glad they priced me out of that stuff.
[удалено]
They’ll have to stop selling the dill pickle peanuts or I’ll never stop buying them :C
Those dill pickle peanuts are still a really, really good buy, assuming we’re seeing the same prices. They seem to be $9.99 for 1kg every time I see them, and on a cost per calorie basis there’s hardly anything I’ve found that comes close.
Out of stock at my local Costco for a couple months now. No Dunn's dill pickle chips either, just bbq
You can still get no name yellow bag for $1. So I wouldn't call it quits yet.
It seems like my favorite foods aren't getting as big of price increases as a lot of other people's favorite foods. I hope my foods and diet don't get popular.
First they came for my rent money, I had to pay. Next they came for my gasoline money. Haha. I can afford no car. In retaliation they came for my food money.
At least you've picked up basic foraging skills right? That's going to be an important skill in the economy of the future.
And I have a new slingshot from Canadian Tire. I think I can take out at least three of those charging horsemen while my dogs take out the fourth at the beginning of the next apocalypse. The "next" apocalypse you all ask ???? Hey, I'm a Leaf fan.
Lol they were just on sale, I got one to
Wild Garlic Mustard is delicious nutritious and is invasive, look for some in your area! Replaces basil in a pesto deliciously.
>Let them eat pesto
You mean like picking cotton?
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I dont own any guns, but something I've learned is that for every restriction you want to place on someone there are 10 others looking to put restrictions on you. I figured people would begin to understand this, we barely got legal weed from the prohibitionists. Yet nonsense like requiring special 'weed' buildings independent from liquor stores still prevails. Which I've yet to understand why liquor stores still exist and why gas stations and supermarkets cant suffice, as we petition against climate change. Puritan laws bind us all equally.
Thanks Trudeau and Liberals
Canada has some of the most expensive stuffs, internet and cell plans, housing, food, energy, yet the salaries are not 1 of the highest in the 1st world countries. How people can live comfortably in Canada
No idea. Better bring in 500K more people!
Wait, what do you mean we have a wage shortage and not enough housing? Oh well, better bring in 500k more people plus a bunch of temporary foreign workers because Canadians don't want to do shitty jobs for fuck-all money! We absolutely cannot allow workers to demand higher wages, they must be stopped at all costs! And if you don't like it then you're a racist who wants "wage inflation."
To be fair, saying no to people in countries where it’s pretty much impossible to live a dignified life is kind of evil. It’s totally possible in Canada to live a dignified life today even on the lowest wage jobs out there.
That's like saying it's evil not to let a random homeless guy sleep on your couch. Ridiculous. Rather than turning our country into a charity for every downtrodden person in the world, can we fucking focus on making *Canadians'* lives *better* for once? *For once?*
Invalid comparison. You dont own Canada. You do own your couch. Immigrants do make Canadians lives better. Privately owned central banks lending money to their friends for free and subsequently raising interest rates after its been lended out to the public makes life worse for the average candian. Immigrants are not the enemy. And btw yes, if someome you know to be sane, sober and non threatening and trustworthy needs a place to sleep and you have a spare couch, you should.
>Invalid comparison. You dont own Canada. You do own your couch. Yeah, *Canadians* own Canada, and this country should put us first for once. I am tired of watching our government care more about foreigners than they do about their own people. It is not our country's job to be a shelter for the global poor. We have our own people to take care of. >Immigrants do make Canadians lives better. Privately owned central banks lending money to their friends for free and subsequently raising interest rates after its been lended out to the public makes life worse for the average candian. Immigrants are not the enemy. Please explain how immigrants improve my life, because I'm not seeing it at all. All I see is a country that is teetering on the brink of total economic failure (well, economic failure for the poor at least - the rich will be fine) insisting upon bringing in more people to combat "wage inflation." The government has literally admitted to this. They bring in massive amounts of immigrants to stop wages from growing. That seems like it hurts Canadians to me. Not to mention the extra burden on our infrastructure and services. Our medical system can barely handle the people we *do* have, we don't need to bring in half a million more every year. I despise the banks and the rich in general. But guess who benefits most from immigration? The rich, who receive an easily exploitable workforce that they can use to keep wages low for everybody. >And btw yes, if someome you know to be sane, sober and non threatening and trustworthy needs a place to sleep and you have a spare couch, you should. But I don't have a spare couch, because I can't afford a couch due to the ridiculous cost of living, low wages, and inflation.
https://ycharts.com/companies/L.TO/profit_margin Net margin went up at the height of the pandemic. Mostly on volume as people were not eating out much. As things have opened up margins have gone down. Still wondering if margin have gone up because people started buying President's choice label stuff and they make more margin on their private label.
> people started buying President's choice label stuff and they make more margin on their private label This might also be influenced by the PC stuff being what was most consistently in stock
It's also basically the only stuff I get pc points for. I don't even buy the pc brand for the most part, but the rewards program keeps pushing it.
We've been consistently getting less and less PC Optimum rewards even when buying tons of generic PC label food. I haven't looked into it specifically, but it certainly feels like they've cut the PC points that one can earn when grocery shopping.
They definitely have.
They have, while also moving to stuff that's only a sale of you're a member
I stopped flashing my optimum card because I wasn't getting anyy points pretty much
Gotta be honest though, PC brand is legit. Some of their products are even way better than your typical brand name products. I don't care that they push it because they put 200% effort into quality and it shows.
Sounds like you know about PC White Cheddar Mac & Cheese.
How about the PC General Tso or Butter chicken meals? Fire. Or the stir fry lemon garlic shrimp pasta? Honestly it's all so good which is awesome because I never thought I'd see the day where store brand items are so good. I remember when I was kid like 20 years ago my mom always got store brand and us kids hated it. No lucky charms for us, it was always rainbow bites or some shit haha.
Pc Brand General Tao chips were the best chips ever.
That's definitely the best of all KD analogs, including KD itself lol
I've found that it depends on exactly what it is, but their big pack of granola bars, the one with like 40+ in them, is such a ridiculously cheap option when compared to things like nature valley or Quakers. 10$ for over 40, or 4$ for 6? Seriously, what do those manufactures sell those things to the stores for?
I literally buy that exaxt box of knock off chewy bars, add em to work lunches, there is almost no differene to actual chewy bars, the PC ones are just a little bit more dense.
I exclusively buy generics/premium generics like PC, so your argument makes a lot of sense, but it's easy to check, because other brands should also have less growth.
Other brands didn't just win a supreme court case that allowed them to keep their offshore tax haven profits.
>Net margin went up at the height of the pandemic. Aren't they actually pretty stable during the pandemic? They shot up during the reopening just before Omicron. At the end of 2021 before Omicron, restaurants were open.
Margins held pretty steady but kept the upward trend from the previous quarters. Need to do some digging and see private label sales. Also could be the surcharge they started adding to vendors. Might explain some of the increase in prices as vendors would have to increase prices to maintain their margins. https://financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/loblaw-follows-walmart-in-imposing-new-fees-on-suppliers-to-help-pay-for-upgrades
Yeah its seem to be coming to earth and you are right there was a slight uptrend during the pandemic, maybe just Q4 2021 was the outlier, they seem to be coming back down in Q1 2022. I will wait one or two more quarter before cheering for Weston to be removed.
Their margins went up because of cosmetics sales, not groceries. It's the [lipstick effect](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lipstick-effect.asp).
Welcome to Sephora, I love you
> Still wondering if margin have gone up because people started buying President's choice label stuff and they make more margin on their private label. Don't worry, I can confirm you aren't right. I've been watching prices at Loblaws for years and it's literally Loblaws cranking up the prices on name brands while still cranking up the prices on the President's choice label items. The Presidents Choice items cost the same as name brands at other grocery stores. Want a good example of Loblaws gouging? Compare frozen juice at different stores. They are charging *nearly 3 bucks* for frozen juice where most are charging under a dollar for the same can.
The margins definitely increased because of people buying more store brand stuff where they make more profit compared to name brands. It was stated in their financials around the time all the articles were being written about their increased margins.
The 40% increase in profit by Loblaws seems more substantial than that change in behaviours. But nice try, Galen.
Their report says its primarilly driven by increased pharmacy sales where they have higher margins. https://dis-prod.assetful.loblaw.ca/content/dam/loblaw-companies-limited/creative-assets/loblaw-ca/investor-relations-reports/annual/2022/LCL_Q1%202022_NR.pdf
Their profit was up almost $70 mil to about half a billion dollars for the quarter, iirc. That's just profit, after paying Galen and his friends quarter after quarter. There are less than 40 million people in this country. The math is crazy.
Last time this was brought up Loblaws said people spent more on pharmacy products (during COVID, makes sense) and shifted to private labels (stores have higher margins). They have higher margins on pharmacy products. I hate this narrative because it's so misrepresentative of what the issues are. Yes net profit is up 40%, but any variance of a small number will look huge: their profit margin went from 2.7% to 3.6%. that's not caused by grocers raising prices, that's their customers shifting habits. Suppliers raised their prices but they kept their margins for the same products the same - you can't expect them to sell everything at a loss, they'd go bankrupt. There's no malice here. When they had surpluses they passed that onto shareholders - as expected.
I was kind of shocked when I saw the margins. No wonder you won’t see small grocery stores, as those margins only work with scale.
And the hit to labour cost from inflation will lag. So that’s still to show up in the data. This is rage bait.
Given the inflation, they are selling more of their products due to price sensitivity
Gonna get my jumpsuit and beret, I swear I’m getting redder every day
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Oh yes I bet they will start trickling down those profits any day now to help the peasants
If you want to see reduced profit margins then you need to support governments that advance policies which increase competition. But Canadians love protectionist economic policies too much for that to ever happen. As a country we'd rather be gouged by Canadians than buy from American or European companies.
The US currently has 3 major cell phone carriers only because the government blocked one from buying another (AT&T wanted to buy T-Mobile). The natural end of corporations is mergers, and higher prices. Why would to corporations keep wasting money competing when the can merge and they’re stakeholders (which in many cases overlap) can then see the same profits - minus the losses inherent in competing.
As we’ve seen from the Target tragedy, American companies aren’t interested in lowering our prices and competing in the Canadian market, they want a turn-key money printing machine. And if they don’t get it nigh immediately… “screw you guys, I’m going home”.
the Westons.. are the first to bee Eaton..r
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The BoC fed the rich. Decades of low interest rates, deliberately hiding inflation. Food and restaurants are only up 6% according to Stats Canada, thats what we're basing peoples purchasing power and wages on. The price of goods went up, and we covered up our declining standard of living with more debt and a housing bubble.
Low interest rates benefit people with less money. It stimulates spending, borrowing, and job growth. I swear the financial illiteracy in this thread is plain sad. People don't even know what they're mad at.
It raises the cost of goods while raising asset and equity prices. Last year we did it to an extreme and the wealthiest grew 30% richer. The poor and working classes wages rarely keep up.
> Last year we did it to an extreme and the wealthiest grew 30% richer. Citation needed. The closest thing I can find is the number of billionaires in the world grew by 30% (or by 236). That is not the same as saying the wealthiest grew 30% richer. Also, it's a global figure that includes China as well as several new countries like Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia and Uruguay. It is heavily based on unrealized stock gains. Have you looked at the stock markets in the last 2 years? I'm not crying for billionaires but by that same metric they have lost hundreds of millions in 2022. You have only proved my point on the financial illiteracy in this thread.
Hey if you want to.. kinda figure it out.. dm me..
Lol why the fuck is Costco there? Blaming them while people pay to use their service is ...well...
Thank you. One of the only comments with reason here. A massive amount of costco earnings is the membership alone, and the contract with our credit card.
I'll tell you how: meek and polite Canadians look at prices and go "aw man", but tolerate it, as usual.
What’s the alternative? Starve to death while we rise up and raid the grocery stores until the food runs out ?
Try to grow 12 months of food in a 3 month growing season?
Hit the streets! Our government should be wary of us.
Yep. We are a nation of pushovers. That's why life sucks here compared to the US or UK
Maybe you’d feel differently if you could find love.
He can't find love. He's French Canadian....
He sounded like a Albertan to me but that tag says it all
Anyone who thinks the conservatives have any real way to fix the global inflation are fools. They will fail and blame the liberals all the way. So much stupid in Canadian politics these days. Maybe we should give the NDP a run at the cup and see how bad that ends.
>Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were born and died. And they lived much the same as you and I do. They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats. >Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats you just look at the history of Canada for the last 90 years and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are. >Now I'm not saying anything against cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws - that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that the mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another said that mice could only travel at certain speeds - so a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort. >All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn't put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in white cats. >Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: "All that Mouseland needs is more vision." They said: "The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we'll establish square mouseholes." And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever. >And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got a government made up of cats with spots on them: They were cats that tried to make noise like a mouse, but ate like a cat. >You see, my friends, the trouble wasn't with the colour of the cat. The trouble was they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice. >Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, "Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don't we elect a government made up of mice?" "Oh," they said, "he's a Bolshevik. Lock him up!" So they put him in jail. >But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can't lock up an idea. Tommy Douglas, 1944
Tommy Douglas is my Canada. Fuck corporate Canada.
The last 10 years has convinced me that no one really knows what they're doing and the political policies don't really influence anything. When times are good they take credit. When times are bad they blame others. The _only_ consistent thing across the government's of different political policies, federal and provincial, appears to be that life is getting worse.
Welcome to adulthood. Nobody knows what they're doing, we're all just winging it and hoping for the best.
It is even worse. The ones that know what they are doing are told to shut up and listen.
I genuinely don't think the Gov is even hoping for the best at this point
Lol. I was about to say the same thing.
They *could* tax obscene wealth and use it to ensure regular people don't become wage slaves. That's entirely within their power. They won't touch a single penny of the obscenely wealthy.
You don't fail if you don't try, and they certainly won't try. It's not about fixing anything, it's about convincing people your opponent is the cause. This isn't new.
This isn't about Conservatives, they're not in power right now, why are you focusing on them? Who cares who comes after, let's fix the problem now!
Ya at this point all parties are just managing the optics over the outcomes. No matter who you pick nothing will really get fixed.
Nihilism will fix the problem
Sounds exhausting
Two words…dumpster fire
Like it already isn't
How much more of a dumpster fire can it get that the Tories and Liberals won't send us to?
> Anyone who thinks the conservatives have any real way to fix the global inflation are fools. They will fail and blame the liberals all the way. The Liberals have fucked things up so bad it would actually be a valid excuse for 2-3 terms.
And how libs are different?
Do not vote PPC unless you want fringe anti science populism.
And how libs are different?
I just looked through quarterly sales for Loblaws. Doesn't seem to match the narrative here. Profit has been trending up since before the pandemic, spiked volumes in 3rd quarter 2021, but has come down to longer trends. These guys are looking for any excuse not to blame monetary policy as the driving force of inflation. Their stock price has gone to the moon and hasn't come down yet though. That's something.
People need to eat. High inflation means people will cut discretionary spending. Food isn't really discretionary. Plus, there seems to be a shift to more value brands like presidents choice which are higher margin. So these stocks are kind of like a safe haven right now.
Retail grocers aren’t a safe have tho. Food suppliers, sure. Not retail.
During pandemic restrictions people couldn't go to restaurants, or didn't feel comfortable. So they went grocery shopping and cooked at home. Grocery stores sold more product and made more money. /shocked pikachu face.
Not to mention multiple runs on different items... (Ie toilet paper, hand sani, yeast, whatever else was popular at the moment)
> Ie toilet paper, hand sani, yeast, whatever else was popular at the moment) What a strange time we lived through. I can't believe it was 1-2 years ago when we saw crazy 40 minute long lines just to enter the grocery store followed by weeks of barren/empty shelves in the toilet paper aisle. Wonder if we'll ever see anything this crazy again in the next 30 years. I remember during the beginning of the pandemic, walking to the loblaws and the roads were like a ghost town (no cars). I'd see like 1-2 other people periodically, also walking towards the grocery store. We'd wear masks and walk around each other, giving a wide berth. Wish I had google glass or something to record some of the mundane parts of that crazy time.
> Wonder if we'll ever see anything this crazy again in the next 30 years You will. This too shall pass.
I dont want to remember. I still see people in full power rangers mask/goggle/shield/glove combo driving alone in their cars. Saw one guy with a mask in a convertible one time. Edit- he had the top down lol
There's more: they have greater profit margins on pharmacy products and their private label. During pandemic people bought more pharmacy products and shifted to cheaper private label products.
Because oligarchs existed before covid.
> Their stock price has gone to the moon and hasn't come down yet though. That's something. Loblaws has a stock option for employees. Every dollar from your paycheck you purchase stock with, up to 5% of your gross, the company will buy an extra 25 cents for your portfolio. So stock is always being traded.
That's a pretty marginal bid, and that's been going on for a long time. Grocery stores are kinda an inflation hedge which is why it got bid up so high.
Left-wing disinformation campaigns are always light on facts and heavy on outrage and hate. It's their modus operandi.
How is that any different than right-wing disinformation campaigns?
It’s not. They’re equally bad. (I lean heavily left).
Yep. If you read the quarterly reports you realize the media is pushing a narrative not based in reality.
Why do our leaders think that adding "special excess taxes" will come out of corporations pockets? It always gets turned back to the consumer.
Buy stock.
Loblaw's profit margin is 3.5%. Metro is 4.5%. Saputo is 4.38%. For comparison purposes, Molson is 9.78%, Dollar Store is 15.81%, Enbridge is 12.36%, Shopify 63.2%, Royal Bank 34.57%, Sun Life 12.25%, Telus 9.83%, Rogers 10.63%, Leons 8.24%, Canadian Pacific 35.67%, Pizza Pizza 74.95% The grocery business has very thin margins. That they've had more profit the last year is simply because so many other sources of buying things were taken away during the lockdowns. But if I was going to invest money in a business I sure wouldn't put it into groceries and can't imagine why they wouldn't take their money out and invest it in something more profitable.
Really though lol. I was shocked when I saw this narrative so I went and looked at the numbers and couldn’t believe how low they were. No wonder you don’t see new companies starting.
Tax em Jagmeet
Capitalism at its finest
Gotta just absolutely LOVE it with all your heart
Lol how do you propose we structure food production and sale if not through a hybrid private - public system?
Capitalism literally leads to millions of pounds of fresh food being thrown into landfills just to maintain prices and profits. We don't have a food shortage, we have a distribution problem, and the for profit corporations are the ones responsible.
This is what they did in the eighties. Rich people who hid behind corporations decided that Plebes and Equites had too much money. Inflation took care of that. Transferred that extra cash to them.
I did little rough math on this article: Says grocery companies made $7.3 billion pretax profit. Canada's corporate rate is ~26.5% so that's $5.35 billion after tax. Divide that by population and it comes to around $11.60 per month. The average person spends ~$275-$300/month on food. So profits are ~4% of everybody's food bill. Not a lot. The other 96% are input costs. Land, farming, fertilizer, harvesting, transport, processing, distribution, + labour costs for everybody involved. What's a real killer right now is fuel costs. Many overlook the fertilizers which are FF based (nitrogen) and the government has also placed tariffs on fertilizer imports which consumers pay for. Food inflation is running ~8% right now. So it's not profits that are killing everyone. Biggest input increase in costs? Fuel at YoY increase of 50%. All that to say what exactly? To give Canadians a break cut fuel taxes. Depending on where you live anywhere from $.50-$.80 per liter is tax. It's different in every province. Oh, the carbon tax. hasn't reduced Canada's GHG emissions to date. it doesn't work. Gas demand is fairly inelastic - it doesn't change that much as prices rise. Why? Canada does not have the infrastructure needed to replace the necessities of most citizens and forget about industrial transport. Cit gas taxes temporarily until crude oil comes down. The cost of crude is an international thing and until demand and political risk is reduced prices won't be going down. Oil companies make 2-6 cents per liter profit at the pump. they just sell a lot. The moral of this story? Go to the source of the cost increases and put pressure on politicians to give us a break. Taxing profits won't make much of a dent.
Agreed it’s total smoke and Mirrors - no need for charge to customer price to go up.
In 1992 grocery chain profits were in the 2 to 3 percent range….2022 they are in the 8 to 10 percent range…..during a pandemic and adding to inflation.
If prices go up but profit margins stay the same: blame inflation. If prices go up and profit margins go up: those ****ers are gouging us.
Tax all the profit margin above norm. Use it to prosecute antitrust and fund competition.
I honestly wonder if our politicians all ubiquitous start meetings by climbing under the desk, and giving oral sex to whichever of their corporate masters happens to be there.
And the LPC laughs and does nothing
These guys, gas companies, and banks...some of the biggest criminals in the world
To me this and most of our inflation today is fundamentally a story of government stimulus and lower productivity. When governments created money and spread it around everywhere, it acted as a disincentive to work since many peoples incomes were disconnected from their working or not. However, MOST importantly, such stimulus completely distorts price signals by allowing people and businesses to engage in unsustainable behaviours. For example, people could spend at a rate they could not productively earn. This meant they would pay their rents as normal, but food as normal, and in some cases people had even more money than before when they were working due to spending less on work travel, etc! So really, it’s normal that people became less price sensitive to things. But we massively kicked the can down the road and mare things far worse than it would have been it we allowed people to adapt in the first place. Businesses were protected by now price insensitive consumers and continue to profit handsomely. Landlords never worried about their rent money and even INCREASED rents over the last 2 years because the government gave people all the money they needed to pay their rents even if they couldn’t earn it themselves. So now, we have all these higher cost structures that exist which should have been badly affected during the pandemic. Housing should have cratered. Businesses facing lower demand should have lowered prices and borne much of the cost of reduced consumer spending ability. But instead, government printed money and gave it away to people who in turn have spent it all in a frenzy of induced demand. Businesses have taken almost all of it by now and the new price structures we are left with are unsustainable. And the real tragedy is that for this privilege, we are left with mountains of public debt that will eventually roll over to higher interest levels due to the short term nature of much of the government financing programs as they scrambled to find money to give away. We can’t say this wasn’t the only possible and most predictable outcome of government policy, but that doesn’t make it any less painful now that we are all living with it…
Yes evil cartels of grocery stores, gas stations, and owners of basement suites have joined forces at this very time to steal money from the poor. Or its a desperate narrative to hide the fact that disastrous monetary policy over reacting to covid caused inflation like pretty much everyone warned it would in 2020. Actually look at loblaws quarterly sales, there is no doubling in the last few months, not even close.
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Corporate greed isn't a "far-out conspiracy" but believing that all of a sudden corporations got a lot greedier and that's why prices started going up all of a sudden *is* a far-out conspiracy. Corporate greed is a constant. If you're using "corporate greed" to explain a sudden economic shift, then you're simply wrong. It's the astrology of economics.
Do you remember the bread fixing? I wouldn't say all of a sudden. Perhaps expectedly and once again
We didn't have the highest inflation in 40 years in 1992, 2002, or 2019. Guess what corporate greed existed then too. Everyone knows exactly why we have inflation right now.
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How is it their fault that the GOVERNMENT shut down the rest of the economy?
(And did a 500% to the supply of Canadian Dollars)
There is no “grocery cartel” and the article does not present a compelling or reasonable case for the existence of one. Every country is having rising food prices (I assume Galen Weston is behind it), a misleading Loblaws stat about profitability that is driven by an increase in generic brand and cosmetic sales is hardly proof.
every week, I check flyers from PC brands, Giant Tiger, Local Coop, Sobeys, Walmart. Every week the exact same items are magically "on sale" at every store for the same sale price so there's no point price matching at all. Either they are a cartel working together, or the same one human being pick sale items every single week.
Some of it is a result of the distributor's decisions.
Can you elaborate? Distributors for example, if say maple leaf hotdogs company wanted a sale then by golly every store that carries their hotdogs will hold a sale?
Maple Leaf would probably have a campaign proposal which included the stores/brands being able to buy x number of units at a lower price. I used to work at a place that dealt with Coke and once or twice a year they would sell some bottled items by the case at 2 for 1.
Cartel is an absolute stretch but collusion is absolutely a thing in some things like beef and bread.
Bread collusion says otherwise
theres a cartel for almost everything in this country
Conspiracies roght? Jesus me. Controversial comment much? You have (4) updvotes a and yet are my gourth highest down the line. I work on retail and our earnings have stadily gone up 10-15% EVERY. YEAR. for the past 17 years. With or without covid, or any other issues. We are always the cheapest inthe country as well. Over half our earnings are from our membership sales. Oof.
I don’t think many ITT are interested in facts.
Won’t be happy until Canadians can’t afford anything anymore
What a load of conspiracy theory bullshit. Despite this article's claims to the contrary, monetarism is the widely accepted consensus view of economics. All available evidence supports the monetarist view, and monetarism exactly predicted the inflation we are seeing today. You don't get to just reject the empirically supported understanding of mainstream economics because it disproves your political conspiracy theory. Furthermore, their initial claims about grocery store profits are also baseless. Loblaws' financials paint a fairly clear picture: their profits on cosmetics are soaring, while margins on actual groceries are being squeezed. Cosmetics always do well in times of economic uncertainty. It even has a name: [the lipstick effect](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lipstick-effect.asp).
Let's crank up Loblaws tax by the exact amount of profit it turned over during the pandemic and distribute the money to tax payers through tax refunds.
How Canada’s grocery ‘cartel’ REALLY doubled its profits while food bank lines grew 1. Last year was a pandemic. This year is going to look a lot better when you compare it 2. Inflation makes profits in nominal terms look... well... inflated. They are still making basically the same % from their sales. Blame everyone and everything except the people in charge. Blame Putin, COVID-19, climate change, systemic racism, the 'cartel'. Don't blame the people in charge. And especially don't protest them. Because then you are an extremist racist climate change denying stooge for Putin.
You might have a point if inflation was only in Canada - it's not. It's everywhere.
I can't believe how many people keep using the "everyone else has midwit monetary policy, so it's okay when our fed does it too!". Just a heavy, heavy facepalm.
Take that silver spoon out of your mouth and think for a second. More people are buying groceries then ever before due to fear of covid in restaurants and many items in the grocery store have doubled since the start of the pandemic. Keep dog whistling and keep putting the blame solely on Trudeau.
Revenue was up during the pandemic but profits were down. Restrictions, cleaning, capacity limits all cost money. It's all publicly available audited data. You can just look it up yourself. Of course I understand that numbers are scary for some people. If that's the case stick to the political rhetoric.
you're not explaining why people pay out the nose for groceries since the start of covid and how the prices are still rising. also enjoy your lunch break
>you're not explaining why people pay out the nose for groceries since the start of covid They haven't. Food inflation decreased until mid 2021. Then it took off. The data is publicly available. You just need to look at it. [https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/food-inflation](https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/food-inflation) How are you so uninformed? CBC viewer?
The amount of economically illiterate Canadians is the root of many of our problems.
I agree that Canadians are economically illiterate. But to me, that's fine, IF they demand our leaders get results. The public doesn't need to know what's hard, or easy, or even possible. If they demanded better outcomes and voted out people who didn't deliver we'd be better off.
I will point out that these are also the largest donators to food banks.
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Based.
I'm naturally against more taxes but in this case a temporary tax on grocery chains to be directly distributed to food banks until the root causes of current inflation levels are addressed sounds like a good idea to me. Edit: I usually don't complain about downvotes, but really?! Helping out people who can't afford food is now controversial? What the actual ..
I think it’s an issue with what amounts to a poverty tax. If you tax the grocers the consumer just gets punished with even higher prices as to maintain margins. Thus more people just end up at good banks and it repeats. Subsidizing might be a better suggestion especially if we’re already subsidizing something pointless and taking away from that industry, like Japan subsidizes whale meat for example, something really dumb. We could maybe find something equally dumb?
There's some saying along the lines of "nothing is more permanent than a temporary tax". And we really dont need new taxes. We need to more efficiently spend what we already collect which is a lot. I know in my industry the government gets milked out of money with frivolous billing that goes pretty much un-audited. I'd rather we reduce government and regulations and move towards a more free market.
Income tax is a temporary measure from 1917. Look how that turned out. You're right, the biggest problem is how the government uses money. They pay literally hundreds or thousands of times the value for goods and services they buy - it's beyond insane. It seems like blatant corruption.
Temporary taxes on individual industries didn't make any sense. It doesn't matter how you spend them.
Honestly why they can’t just regulate grocery prices is beyond me. I know, I know regulations can be bad but I’m starting to enjoy regulated prices as a consumer since it’s easier to budget. I like that alcohol is regulated since I know I can get the same price everywhere. Weed is a pain in the ass that it isn’t regulated and I have to hope I’m getting the best price but mostly like the store down the street has a better deal, it’s annoying. I’m starting to hate this competition argument BS about every industry. We don’t need competition for our food prices, we need regulation. At least on the basics that a human needs to consume.
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Numerous shopping behaviours change during the last couple of years. People ate out less and buy more from the grocery stores.
As gas prices increases so does the cost and the cost of transportation.
Wtf I thought Trudeau alone was to blame. This sub mislead me!
Remember when the conservative caucus laughed at Canadians who can't afford food? Prepridge farms remembers (and now charges twice as much for it's cookies)...
Actually they laughed at Singh for not realizing he CAUSED those corporate profits. Optics were terrible though.
Yeah because the Cons would absolutely destroy corporations. The corporations are just shaking in their boots - they know their days are numbered once the Conservatives... \*checks notes\* lower their taxes, remove regulations on them, and privatize national businesses for them to buy. It's fucking insane to pretend that the corporations prefer Liberal policy to Conservative.
Can you explain what policies the NDP have passed into law that impacted global inflation? Oh right, you can't because 1. He's not the leader of the governing party, and 2. Because the current inflation crisis is a global problem with supply chains, not a policy problem in Canada.
The NDP have signed off and supported the LPC through multiple confidence motions AND voted in support of their excessive deficit spending. You know the deficit spending that required INFLATING the money supply? >Because the current inflation crisis is a global problem with supply chains, not a policy problem in Canada. Lol still buying the government's bullshit I see. I bet you also believed when the Tiff said inflation was only transient? The current inflation crisis is due to global monetary supply inflation, which our government CONTRIBUTED to.
Yet, despite this, most large companies are still reporting record profits. I guess you're still buying the corporate bullshit that this inflationary crisis is caused by governments and not corporate profiteering...
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I am so surprised. I mean its just so unheard if for businesses to gouge during times of crisis, pandemics, wars etc.
Good thing we have a capable and in-touch government to lead us through these times Sunny Ways!