Grocery stores

“In Canada, because of a lack of competition, grocery chains were able to fully pass on cost increases to customers, keeping their margins stable and earning higher dollar profits over a now larger cost base,” Bester explained in an email.

The Agenda with Steve Paikin discusses a new report from the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project that argues Canada’s food system is being undermined by monopoly. And while grocery stores have become an easy target for consumer anger over the cost of food, this report says consolidation has occurred at all levels of the supply chain. The Agenda looks at the implications of the report.

A text blast campaign from Loblaw-owned No Frills encouraging customers to buy local produce at the store instead of a farmers' market wasn't well received by many shoppers or farmers.

Industry and technology members go over the fine print of New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh’s backbench bid to boost the power of the federal competition bureau and tribunal to investigate — and, in some cases, intervene in — allegations of price-fixing and other “anti-competitive activities,” particularly, although not exclusively, those involving the grocery sector, with Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project executive director Keldon Bester, OpenMedia executive director Matthew Hatfield and a panel of academics.

Talking competition with our grocery stores. We’re going to have a deeper dive into that today with Keldon Bester, co-founder of Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project.