Canada’s grocery business is controlled by large players and needs government assistance to encourage new entrants to bring down prices, a report from Canada’s Competition Bureau says.
No crap! Duhhh. Finally competition bureau is doing some of their home work. And new entrant encouragement isn’t the only action that’s available. And that’s not the only sector that’s been consolidated either. Someone needs to kick the behind of these bureaucrats.
Are there any trackers on what they or the CRTC have done? It’d be nice to hold them accountable for not just saying things but actually doing things.
I tried to see if Open Media has something, but looks like it’s just the campaigns: https://openmedia.org/campaigns
There was a campaign a year ago about telecom monopoly practices, but it’s now closed: https://openmedia.org/press/item/over-28000-petition-signers-call-for-end-to-canadas-telecom-monopoly
The Weston’s own most of the pharmacy, the grocery, food supply chain, and are moving into healthcare at breakneck pace. No shit it’s too concentrated. We need actual antitrust laws.
Sadly it doesn’t matter if we have antitrust laws or not when no one is willing to enforce them.
Much cheaper to break up the monopolies and change the system to prevent them forming in the first place. Subsidizing new entrants without changing the environment that creates monopolies will just feed the beasts with fresh meat.
Basically what happened in the mobile space. I’m 2008 CRTC had an AWS spectrum auction for new entrants in the wireless industry, namely Mobilicity, Public Mobile, and WIND Mobile. Public was bought out by Telus. Mobilicity was bought by Rogers and merged with Chatr. WIND hung out longer and became Freedom under Shaw, but of course Shawgers happened, so we’re back to square one.
Don’t see how this will work? Walmart entered Canada many years ago and does groceries yet pricing all settled out. If Walmart isn’t driving competition and pricing down what will?
I’ve seen a couple of (very limited) examples of restaurants using their contracts with suppliers to open small local grocery stores near their restaurants, that undercut the big grocery chains. If anything was possible, I’d prefer more local neighbourhood stores for packaged foods and community garden co-ops combined with farmer’s markets for fresh foods.
In other news, water is wet!
We used to have laws and regulations in place for stuff like this, same with the USA. As years passed they lost their teeth
Canada’s regulatory agencies feel so incredibly spineless. So many industries here are unchecked oligopolies with skyrocketing prices.
My American friends are jawdropped when I tell them how much food, internet, and cell plans cost here.
You lose all your teeth if all you’re eating is cookies, candy and Coca Cola everyday. Our economy is basically a toothless overweight diabetic
