Canadians will "soon" start to see the big grocers taking action to address food prices, including price freezes and price-matching campaigns, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced Thursday.
Providing an update on what he is calling the "initial commitments" from Loblaw, Metro, Empire, Walmart and Costco, Champagne said all five have agreed to begin rolling out various actions at each of their stores that will result in lower grocery prices for Canadians "in the coming days and weeks."
For example, the government is promising that grocers will implement "aggressive discounts across a basket of key food products that represent the most important purchases for most households," a step the minister said is just the beginning "of a number of actions" being taken.
In addition, Champagne said the federal government is establishing a "grocery task force" within the Office of Consumer Affairs that will be focused on monthly monitoring of grocers' commitments and actions taken by others in the food industry.
This task force will be empowered to "investigate and uncover practices that hurt consumers, such as 'shrinkflation' and 'dequaliflation'."
Champagne said plans are still in the works to establish a grocery "code of conduct" to support fairness and transparency in the sector, and to create a new food price "data hub" to allow better access to information about the price of food in Canada.
These steps come after Champagne held a series of meetings over the last few weeks, starting with the CEOs and senior leaders(opens in a new tab) from Canada's five major grocery chains, with the goal of working towards presenting a plan to stabilize food prices by Thanksgiving.
Champagne also met with international manufacturing companies and domestic manufacturers, after the Retail Council of Canada called for Ottawa to work with more players along the supply chain to tackle the issue.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had given an ultimatum to grocers(opens in a new tab), saying if they didn't come to the table, they would face consequences such as tax measures for "making record profits" on the backs of Canadians struggling to feed their families.
Asked whether steps like price freezing—a measure certain grocers had already pursued—are really enough to satisfy the government's demands, Champagne said the Liberals will take additional action if these measures don't result in adequate food price stabilization.
The cost of food and the inflation driving it has been a dominating issue on Parliament Hill since the fall sitting began, but as Canadians began preparing their grocery lists and stocking up for this weekend's meals, the political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has ramped up in the House.
While the pace of inflation has slowed compared to the heights seen in 2022, the latest Consumer Price Index report from Statistics Canada shows that the cost of most food items did increase year-over-year in August.
This price pressure has resulted in many Canadians changing their shopping habits(opens in a new tab), opting more often for discount stores or scouring flyers for deals.
The federal Liberals are also pushing ahead with changes to Canada's Competition Act aimed at beefing up protections for Canadians in connection to current grocery sector competition through Bill C-56, "The Affordable Housing and Groceries Act." (opens in a new tab)
The government is pursuing amendments that if passed would give more power to the Competition Bureau to investigate and take enforcement action on unfair behaviour in the sector, such as price fixing or price gouging, while making it harder for large grocers to prevent smaller competitors from setting up shop nearby.
With Bill C-56 up for its fifth day of debate at second reading on Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland called on Poilievre to "end the procedural delays" saying there is "really no excuse for delaying this legislation."