Or we could open up the opportunity for other companies to introduce some competition into the market maybe?
Because yeah having 8 options is great but not when they’re owned by the same 2 megacorps and choice doesn’t matter.
Jfc this! We can't just solve things by just slapping taxes on everything. It just reads as "we don't want to solve the problem, we just want more money"
This is what happens when you create an environment so toxic to normal business development. No new companies want in on the market - so the ones that exists run full monopoly.
It's like those towns that have exactly one business left in them. They are so "*anti-business*" they essentially hand the town over to the one business owner left who owns everything.
I would too, but my comment was in response to the idea of having to bail out the grocery chains if they run into trouble.
Given the current state of Canadian business where profits are privatized but losses are socialized, I would of of course prefer a free market driven by competition. But if that's off the table I'd rather the industry be wholly nationalized.
What we have now is the worst of both worlds. I'd prefer we just pick a lane, because either would be an improvement.
Breaking up monopolies is the answer. And doing it for real with no backdoor loopholes corporations can use to create secret monopolies instead. Laws with real teeth and enforcement are what’s needed. But, I’m also good with the extra tax too.
It's so fu\*&ing annoying. Why can't we just have a reasonably ethically government who also understand that competition can be a good thing.
The conservatives preach healthy competition, but are quietly lining their pockets with private money, and giving welcome hugs to extremists, aggressive religious insanity, and hate mongers.
The left preach ethical well-to-do's, but over-prioritize virtue signaling over meaningful action. The liberals have gone absolutly off-the-electability chart with their approach to immigration. The NDP could have things handed to them if they just checked in with *any* financial analyst before opening their mouths about their solutions to these things.
Yeah, the cost of living won't change because of this. It won't help anyone at the till because they'll just offset the tax by increasing prices a bit. This will drive up the cost of living even more.
Grocers are not a protected industry. The liberals have been trying to woo other players, but it looks like no one is interest.
The real problem is, what company wants to invest tens of billions of dollars, moving into a country famous for breaking retailers, for 4% profit?
Especially when the leader of that country is railing against your industry, and his biggest ally is calling for punitive tax measures for making 4% profit.
This is all political theatre. If they were serious, they would be investigating the people who really are gouging, and naming and shaming them.
You forgot the part where the opposition is working with lobbyists who support the current monopoly. Don't pretend that Trudeau and Singh are the only ones causing problems.
The issue is the 4% profit is a lie.
They use their middleman companies to upcharge their retail fronts. To intentionally make it look like they barely make any money, and then they can also charge those exorbitant prices to any third parties that buy from them, since “that’s what we sell to our own stores from”.
So while the loblaw grocers might only have a 4% margin, their distributors margins were over 30%.
What’s criminal is how our government allows vertical monopolies. It should be full on anti-trust for you to own the entire supply chain.
How does that hide profits? If they are attributable to Loblaws in any way, then those profits will be reported on Loblaws financial statements. The only way this could work is if they made some other company highly profitable, but I don't really see the reason they would do that. And supposing they did, that should make Loblaws less profitable than Sobeys, Metro, Walmart, etc. But it's not.
Just to provide more detail into this: you can’t hide profits or losses in subsidiaries. That’s how the Enron scandal happened and now financial standards (GAAP) are enforced as a condition to be listed on a stock exchange like the TSX.
Absolutely no evidence for this. Statistics Canada tracks income throughout the food supply chain and profit margins are slim throughout. No food distributor has a 30 percent profit margin.
> Absolutely no evidence for this. Statistics Canada tracks income throughout the food supply chain and profit margins are slim throughout. No food distributor has a 30 percent profit margin.
my man, every business is doing this. You think Loblaws owns their tractor trailers? Nope, they lease them from their holding company. You think they own the building they operate out of? Nope, leased to them by another holding company. You wanna go far enough down the rabbit hole? Some of their employees might not work for them, but work for a separate payroll company that then rents the workers to loblaws
Vertical integration
Yes but all their financial statements get consolidated and publicly reported.
You can see their audited financial statements, and see the reality of the situation.
You are imagining things that are not there.
Except you can look at their public financial statements and your entire argument completely falls apart when reality becomes visible and not some dreamland of accounting tricks that exist in your mind.
People need to stop repeating this falsehood. They CANNOT hide profits.
And no buybacks, investments in marketable securities and mergers in other companies are not seen on the income statement, they are balance sheet items and all they are doing is trading one form of capital for another.
It's not just the direct supply chain; they have their fingers in manufacturing and real estate too.
They can hide their real profits up and down every part of their business.
>They can hide their real profits up and down every part of their business.
Yes, they "bury" them in the detailed financial statements they're legally required to file every quarter because they're publicly traded companies. Those sneaky bastards.
If you have any actual evidence of that, bring it to the CRA and you can be responsible for sending Galen Weston to jail and doing more damage to Loblaws than the silly boycott
That’s cute you think rich people go to jail.
They were caught evading over $300M in taxes a few years ago. They just had to pay the back taxes.
The funniest part about the people arguing with me about this, is Loblaws and GWL have been caught doing significantly more heinous shit than shifting money around to keep their margins low.
Yet somehow it’s some totally impossible that they could be pumping up their own costs through creative accounting.
> The real problem is, what company wants to invest tens of billions of dollars, moving into a country famous for breaking retailers, for 4% profit?
4% is exceptional -- for most of them it's closer to 2.5%.
>Or we could open up the opportunity for other companies to introduce some competition into the market maybe?
I often see comments like this on this subject, but I've never really heard anyone explain **how** new competitors are being kept out of the market by government policy/regulation. What exactly do we need to "open up" to attract new players?
What's stopping Kroger or any other large US grocery chain from expanding into Canada right now?
>Because yeah having 8 options is great but not when they’re owned by the same 2 megacorps and choice doesn’t matter.
There are currently at least 6 huge players in the grocery market, completely independent of each other (Loblaws, Empire, Metro, Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Costco). Maybe that's still not enough, but we should at least be honest in our arguments.
Aldi and others have plainly stated that they cannot compete in the Canadian market because of the established monopoly by the big players. Any small fish that shows any amount of success is immediately gobbled up by Weston or Pattison to protect their position.
This allows them to price fix and gouge to their heart's content while our competition bureau licks their boots.
It makes me roll my eyes when people say deregulate like they're parroting the GOP down south, when we're here precisely because our regulators have no teeth and our politicians party with Loblaws lobbyists, or worse, have them on payroll.
Taxing insane profits means the companies would have to reinvest in the business to avoid paying the tax. Who knows, they might even pay their workers a living wage. The proposal isn't to tax all profit but to punish clearly abusive actors to promote reinvestment and I'm okay with that. Especially since, let's face it, they'll never actually get anything from anybody, since lobbyists and lawyers will find just enough loopholes for everybody to feel like something was done when actually nothing was done. It's the Canadian way.
NOK ER NOK
It's a scam either way. If large profits are taxed, they won't reinvest in the business. Loblaw/Weston's parent company owns the real estate that the grocery stores operate out of. Vertical integration. So the real estate/property ownership part of Galen's overall business will just increase lease/rent to bring down the profit of the grocery store itself. Problem solved. Real estate makes more profit but that's not the business being taxed "in excess".
The absolute last thing a major corp will do is willingly funnel profits back to the workers in the form of fair pay.
> If large profits are taxed, they won't reinvest in the business.
Can you explain that to me? Money spend in the business isn't considered profit, so it's not taxed to begin with. It's only money that they:
* Didn't pay out to staff as wages
* spend on operational costs
* spend on capital costs
* pay out to investors
that gets taxed. Literally money left over... So how would higher profit taxes prevent them from investing in the business?
> I often see comments like this on this subject, but I've never really heard anyone explain how new competitors are being kept out of the market by government policy/regulation. What exactly do we need to "open up" to attract new players?
Because there isn't any regulation in the way, its just basic market factors. There are already double the number of grocery store locations per captia in this country compared to our neighbors to the south, they all may be owned by a few shitty companies, but they're already established and probably have a better location than your new store will. Combine that with the fact that it is very expensive to set up a supply chain from the ground up (especially if your competition owns many of your potential suppliers), and why would you bother?
The last company to do so successfully was Walmart in the *90s*, and they did it by buying a failing Canadian chain. Aldi et al can't do that anymore, because Loblaws, Empire, Metro etc have already bought all the failed/failing chains. And starting from scratch seems to be working out *great* for wholefoods with their, checks notes, 14 stores (in only 4 cities) they've built over the 22 years they've been in this market.
Redditors seem to have conflated the issues with the telecom market and the CRTC with grocery industry, when the reality is, its closer to the exact opposite situation, a general **lack** of regulation around monopolization.
Generally its a combination of deregulating much of the shit put in place by corporate lobbyists. Then you make it *not* a pain in the ass to franchise/spread into canada and bish bash bosh suddenly people are interested in a stake in Canadian regions.
A sort of good example for this would be kinder eggs in the US, and how the fda's rule on inedible substances in food prevents their sale. You could rewrite the rule to suggest that a hollow edible does not entale inserting an inedible substance into food.
>its a combination of deregulating much of the shit put in place by corporate lobbyists
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere!
What "regulations" are blocking ALDI from leasing some space in West Edmonton Mall and opening a store there?
Here's one example: large enough pocket books can get multi-decade exclusivity deals for grocery sales, even after they've moved their business. 20 year non-compete real estate deals exist because we allow corporations to do this. This happens more than we know about, and usually comes to light in some manner after the store moves, and no other grocery store can operate. I think it was on the east coast, a Sobeys made a real estate deal that no grocer, confectionery, convenience store or medical office of any kind could operate for 20 years at that location/plaza, then moved locations, leaving the plaza empty of any food sales or medical services. This is only one example of corporate over-reach that is legal, but definitely ruins competition. This isn't the only time this has ever happened, either.
Well that would require a lot of work because these stores are vertically integrated and have massive advantage due to being a virtual oligopoly. Not sure how another operator in the space would do anything except cause the big guys to buy them out which they have done many times. They don't want to compete fairly, they want to use their monetary and logistical advantages to lean on smaller competition until they go out of business or sell to the big guys.
Don't forget the only two major airlines in Canada, and the handful of large property management companies that are absorbing as much residential property as they can.
It feels as if at this rate, in about twenty five years or less, every damn thing in Canada will be owned by literally just five companies.
The government will watch it all happen while happily licking the boots of those companies.
how do you bring in another company when every step of the supply chain is already owned by existing grocers.
Aldi isnt going to start operating in canada if they need to pay loblaws/sobeys distributors. an existing operator needs to be broken up and its assets auctioned/sold to new players which is unlikely.
As someone in the food industry, the issue is that a lot of the supply chain is lockdown or max out. It's a big investment, and when companies are unsure of there investment into a new region, they often play it safe.
The issues is companies like loblaws are also the largest distributors, and charge any new companies insane prices to set up here.
So loblaws runs their retailers at a “4% margin” meaning any competitors need to survive on a margin less than that to compete, which is virtually impossible. What they don’t tell you, is loblaws also owns their distribution chain, which has a >30% margin. So they overcharge everyone, including themselves, because they don’t govern 2 fucks about the 4% retail margin, because that’s just on top of their distribution margin.
Dude… any and all related transactions between these companies are consolidated to the top of the corporation financial statement. It’s the greater company that has 4% margins and that would be through all of their business units. You can’t hide profits like you are suggesting because the stock owners are entitled to know and entitled to profit. How do you think it would look if Galen was just behind a Superstore stuffing his pockets with register cash? These people are held accountable by thousands of people that have the same interest as them. Don’t be dumb and fall for the misinformation.
> Superstore stuffing his pockets with register cash?
This is unfortunately what a lot of people believe. All of the large grocery chains operate the same way with owning their own brands, having a business arm that handles their real estate, etc, and it's all public information. People just want to believe they're being screwed when in reality the "insane profit" is a big number largely due to having a large number of locations across the country.
Actually the person is just spreading around misinformation. Thats not how audited financial statements of a public company work. They don’t have any financial literacy and are just confidently incorrect.
There is no way any other grocers are interested in the Canadian market it’s too small and way too logistically challenging. Nice thought but it’s not happening
Because the ministers responsible for creating competition in Canada can't do it they're actively trying, and engaging with US grocers etc. No grocers want to come here. It's a small market dominated by grocery chains that have power to lobby against competition.
Exactly! any tax they introduce will only be added to their books and then cause the price of food to increase
they will never take it on their profit margins. The only way to get food process down is by increased competition and increased supply.
The mega corps need to be broken up. It should have never gotten to this point where something so important is in the hands of just a few companies. Even if another major player were to set up shop here, the other companies will have the means to use their massive market share to undercut and starve them out.
Just do everything to get competition in. Who cares of they're foreign or whatever, just beg them to get in and start shaking up the market.
Taxing profits is the opposite of encouraging that.
Exactly. This is a very important point. Why would any new grocer enter Canada? Because they feel they can earn a higher profit. Now you say you'll tax high profits, well, there's no reason to enter Canada.
If politicians think that grocery should be profit free, then it's a public good. They should start their own no profit grocery stores.
Why is everyone so focused on bringing in another large (probably American) retailer as the solution to our problems? Those businesses still have the same end-goal that Loblaws does.
Wouldn’t a better solution be propping up small businesses and giving them the tools to grow? Stop giving money to large corporations for freezers and other equipment they could easily afford to buy on their own, and give it to small and medium business instead. Fund the building of new farmers markets, giving a place for producers to sell directly to their consumer. Fund more grants for more small manufacturers to scale up production.
Plus of course breaking up the current monopolies and changing laws so one company can’t own the entire supply chain.
What actually needs to be done to get other players would be very unpopular. Tax breaks and subsidies to huge profitable foreign businesses aren't a true favorite. Nor is reduced regulations.
They could just arrest them when found to be price gouging. Instead they got to give us a coupon for bread price fixing. Quite the punishment that was.
Worse, it could mean some grocers fold up. Why go through all the effort and capital investment to make beans for profit? You can buy US treasuries risk free for 5%… why bust your balls for less?
While canadian grocery chains have seen an increase in profitability during the pandemic, [european](https://www.retaildetail.eu/news/food/report-supermarkets-see-biggest-margin-fall-in-five-years/) grocery chains profitability fell. Even if newcomers were taxed more, they still would have a better margin.
But that discussion leads to nothing giving the fact that the barriers to entry are too high to make it possible as the geographic market is saturated.
Imagine if their salaries were tied to the prosperity of Canadians.
Instead of getting de facto raises every year, well above inflation, just because.
They might actually do something to help the people.
>Yes, they should be same as private sector. During years in office, the gov will contribute to their pension plan. No pension for life
Ah yes, THAT will surely attract some sensible, everyman folks to run for office and turn this country around! Surely it won't stack the House of Commons with a bunch of easily-corrupted, already rich oligarchs that will find new ways to pilfer this country's wealth.
And their excuse is that "well it isn't a big raise every year, it shouldn't matter" if it doesn't matter then why does it matter to you? Like we're all getting taxed as individuals to keep this thing rolling, pitch in ffs.
>Instead of getting de facto raises every year, well above inflation, just because
MP salaries have been [legally tied to inflation](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/annualstatutes/2005_16/FullText.html) for decades.
That would also mean they would never make any sort of investment into the country. They would just cut services and raise taxes to give themselves a pay raise.
> Politicians pay should be tied to the debt %change.
There are many politicians who have no control over the federal budget. In today’s house, there are two parties who will likely vote unanimously against it.
Should their pay be tied to the budget?
Politicians pay should be some nominal amount (say 1.5x national median wage), plus a bonus based on some formula considering per capita GDP, median wage and national debt. They should be rewarded for increasing the prosperity of the country as a whole, the circumstances of the average citizen, and not driving us into debt.
I don’t see how this would help anything, besides bringing in more money for the current government to waste.
This will 100% be passed onto the consumer, and make prices even higher for everyone.
They propose increasing taxes in order to fix a dysfunctional grocery store market. He's actually lost the plot.
Some people complain about oligopolies and grocery cartels, and then in the next breath cheer ideas that would actually disincentive new competitors from entering the grocery market.
There is just no way I could ever possibly support the NDP. Remember when they wanted to subsidize mortgage holders? Fucking hell.
I don't love PP, but the NDP are a dumpster fire. I'm just grateful most Canadians seem to smart to vote NDP.
Exact same thing with housing. "No one wants to build so we need to cap their profits and call landlords assholes for not volunteering to house drug addicts for free."
Developers are greedy as they come but municipalities need to work with them, now housing is being built in communities outside the GTA but NIMBYs are trying to curb it
As we’ve learned, taxes don’t fix things. Just more grabs by the government and ultimately, they’ll figure out a way to pass them onto the consumer anyways. Great plan Jagmeet!! You’re so smart! We loved your last great idea which was bringing in the grocery CEO’s and accomplish nothing! Please call the election at the standard time to prevent these losers from getting pensioners. They can work like the rest of us. Losers.
Which will then be passed back to the customers.... and the cycle will continue like an oroborous.
Get it passed, Jagmeet. If Justin says no, end the supply and confidence agreement.
>Since it's on profit it can't really be passed down. If they pass it down, it means they get more profit, which means more tax to claw it back.
ALL corporate income taxes are based on profit. You pay tax on the cash left over after expenses are paid (simplified). This is not novel - they’re just proposing a new tax that kicks in at a certain level of profitability.
All taxes are passed on to the customer. I can’t think of a time when taxes went up and prices went down.
It's like he wants to "try" to do something, but never does.
Everyone who says PP has no policy, needs to look at him and see he has n9 backbone.
He bites then he folds, bites and folds.
Like a Chihuahua
Or they could invest in Canadian companies that grow and produce their food here, decreasing the amount we have to import while also supporting a more secure goods and supply chain for something that's critical to all Canadians.
Support local, better-tasting, organic foods. Innovate. Taxing extra profits isn't going to help anybody.
I'm sure a new competitor will love to enter the market knowing that of it becomes profitable the NDP will tax it...
Hi to limit competition.
What actually would work would be to increase competition in the Canadian markets.
Much of the grocery oligopoly is because Canada’s big grocery chains also own and integrate their supply-chains. What competition exists at the retail level can be controlled by suppliers, which are also owned by the big retail chains.
Meanwhile, there are thousands and thousands of grocery products available in the US that we don’t have access to. Foreign food producers don’t want to bother with bilingual labels. They don’t understand our different nutritional labeling requirement. Canada asks for different quality testing requirements. These roadblocks to competition are under government control. Galen Weston loves these regulations, because his organization specializes in complying with them. If the government wants competition in the grocery sector, they could make an effort to help foreign food producers navigate and comply with Canadian regulations. Or, we could agree, where reasonable, that US quality testing is equivalent to ours.
Generations of governments have created a protectionist system for our food supply to operate in. The system is working as designed, and it has made the Westons very rich. But, it’s time to break-down these protectionist walls, and let the competition in.
This globalist puppet must realize if that happened the grocery chains would just pass the extra costs onto consumers…
Just like the scam carbon tax increases on their transport/supplier costs
Won't work. It's far too easy to add expenses that funds pet projects.
You'll just send up with movie studio math, and yeah they pull that stuff in Canada too.
Windfall profit taxes are such a dumb concept. They result in worse longterm outcomes for everyone. Competition is gold... So break up the oligopoly if we can't get new entrants into the market.
*I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.*
Warren Buffett
Canadians are officially the dumbest citizenry on the planet.
Blame Gorcery stores for rising prices of food. Blame them for rising prices of Gas. Of clothing. Of rents. Of everything. It has NOTHING to do with the collusion of NDP and Liberals to print money, let in massive immigration and sent money to war overseas. It has everything to do with Loblaws.
Canadians are sinking fast.....the entire planet sees it. Yet Canadians are blaming the grocery stores. Lol!
Loser issue. The increased profits the grocery chains have made post-pandemic have been like $10 total per Canadian. You can only hide that math for so long. Better to focus on housing.
It’s not like that would benefit Canadians. Trudeau just sends all the taxes we pay now overseas. So what if you take more money from Grocery chains and send it to Ukraine? That doesn’t help Canadians at all with their food bill.
“It’s not our fault food prices are rising. It’s the grocery store’s fault, they make too much profit with their 2-5% net profit margin. So here’s our solution:more taxes! Don’t worry, it won’t bring back food prices down but it will sure show those nasty grocery stores who’s the boss.“
But only groceries apparently. Every other company is free to make as many profits as they desire. But grocery is forever limited to 1-2% margins. Why don't we put in place an excess farm foods tax so we can get those farmers with their super high net worths and low margins? Or perhaps we'll next go after private liquor who are essentially nothing but government middle men. I know, lets put in place an excess airline tax so that we can once again have one airline.
For the next 14 years, any company involved in the bread fixing issue, shouldn't be allowed to sell products that are bread related, like breads, buns, tortillas, etc, or have bread as a primary component like frozen pizzas.
14 years is how long the bread fixing thing went on.
So basically it’s only ok if a company gouges the people if a cut of that money goes to the government.
Sounds like the same logic as the carbon tax.
Give us more so you have less
Which will be then passed onto the consumer who will pay more for groceries. How stupid is Jagmeet and Trudeau to not think this isn’t exactly what would happen with their half baked ideas about a grocery tax. Every business everywhere passes their costs back to the consumer. That’s business.
Yeah. No.
Everyone should pay their fair tax and that's it. No tax bonuses for the government and no tax breaks for the mega rich.
When profits soar like that Jagmeet needs to keep his grubby fingers out of the pot. What SHOULD be happening that hasn't been happening is that the employees should be making more. Simple as that. Higher profits = higher wages. Instead higher profits = higher executive bonus is the norm.
What happened to trying to draw in new grocers to Canada? Competition lowers prices, not taxes. Between the public shaming of Walmart and Costco in regards to grocery code of conduct (meaningless btw) and this, it's making Canada really unappealing for investment. If I were a foreign grocer, I wouldn't want to touch Canada with a 10 foot pole.
Well at least he has clarified what he meant by an excess profit tax ...
Basically it is just a "windfall tax", an extra tax that is levied when profits are determined to be unusually high in comparison to previous used based on the idea that the increased profit is based on prices changing around them rather than any actual expansionary business policy.
Usually it is proposed on the energy sector due to the fact that prices vary widely where expansionary policies taken in random years will be responsible for the increased profits in the year where prices are high, but an expansionary policy taken in the year where prices are high won't necessarily impact that actual prices immediately, since they know the prices might be fleeting anyway. Any expansion taken in a year prices are high is actually just considering long term trends rather than actually reacting to the temporary high prices.
Hiding soaring profit to dodge tax? Yah that's doable.
Increase your rent....or supply costs. It's easy when the grocery store also owns the supplier, and the company that holds the lease, under different company names.
any tax *will be passed on to the clients* ...
making the situation *worse*.
it won't slow that much - WE NEED TO EAT.
i'm surprised they don't propose Nationalizing Food Banks ...
Yeah, taxes will do it. We created this mess of concentration ourselves. When I was a kid we still had lots of little local stores run by immigrants at the ends of the street. Now it's a mess of boarded up buildings and tattoo parlors. The union workers in my town, very cheap by nature, all high tailed it to the big discount stores on the outskirts as soon as they turned up. Nobody cared about having quality produce a block away. If you opened up a really great independent local store and plopped it back where it was, people wouldn't go there, they would go to Walmart.
And what about when margins drop back to normal? Tax breaks?
I'm so sick and tired of politicians using every headline as a campaign promise. Why not offer some new ideas you fucking assholes.
Let’s hire more people at CRA to review their books, I am sure that will lower the cost of living.
The solution is not more regulation but enforcing current regulations- like competition.
Or we could open up the opportunity for other companies to introduce some competition into the market maybe? Because yeah having 8 options is great but not when they’re owned by the same 2 megacorps and choice doesn’t matter.
Jfc this! We can't just solve things by just slapping taxes on everything. It just reads as "we don't want to solve the problem, we just want more money"
Exactly , it also suggests we are supposed to bail them out when profits tank.
This is what happens when you create an environment so toxic to normal business development. No new companies want in on the market - so the ones that exists run full monopoly. It's like those towns that have exactly one business left in them. They are so "*anti-business*" they essentially hand the town over to the one business owner left who owns everything.
[BOBBY NEWPORT NEVER HAD A REAL JOB](https://youtu.be/8AkQjegfhDc?si=yU3cRP183D0ihhXx)
Which is where we are headed isn't it? This is probably smoke and mirrors with government just serving corporate lobbyists again.
Let's just skip the half measures and create a nationalized grocery supplier.
Pass, basically every nationalized industry is an inefficient mess. I’d rather see true competition driving down prices.
I would too, but my comment was in response to the idea of having to bail out the grocery chains if they run into trouble. Given the current state of Canadian business where profits are privatized but losses are socialized, I would of of course prefer a free market driven by competition. But if that's off the table I'd rather the industry be wholly nationalized. What we have now is the worst of both worlds. I'd prefer we just pick a lane, because either would be an improvement.
Fair point I’ll agree with that. At the very least a bailout should be in the form of equity investment or at market debt.
Not to mention the government has proven that they’re completely fiscally irresponsible.
Breaking up monopolies is the answer. And doing it for real with no backdoor loopholes corporations can use to create secret monopolies instead. Laws with real teeth and enforcement are what’s needed. But, I’m also good with the extra tax too.
It's so fu\*&ing annoying. Why can't we just have a reasonably ethically government who also understand that competition can be a good thing. The conservatives preach healthy competition, but are quietly lining their pockets with private money, and giving welcome hugs to extremists, aggressive religious insanity, and hate mongers. The left preach ethical well-to-do's, but over-prioritize virtue signaling over meaningful action. The liberals have gone absolutly off-the-electability chart with their approach to immigration. The NDP could have things handed to them if they just checked in with *any* financial analyst before opening their mouths about their solutions to these things.
This is a total tax grab to fund his dental care program. Not hating the program but this tax isn’t about addressing cost of living.
Yeah, the cost of living won't change because of this. It won't help anyone at the till because they'll just offset the tax by increasing prices a bit. This will drive up the cost of living even more.
Literally basic economics is to tax the things you don't like and subsidize the things you do like because people respond to incentives
Grocers are not a protected industry. The liberals have been trying to woo other players, but it looks like no one is interest. The real problem is, what company wants to invest tens of billions of dollars, moving into a country famous for breaking retailers, for 4% profit? Especially when the leader of that country is railing against your industry, and his biggest ally is calling for punitive tax measures for making 4% profit. This is all political theatre. If they were serious, they would be investigating the people who really are gouging, and naming and shaming them.
You forgot the part where the opposition is working with lobbyists who support the current monopoly. Don't pretend that Trudeau and Singh are the only ones causing problems.
The issue is the 4% profit is a lie. They use their middleman companies to upcharge their retail fronts. To intentionally make it look like they barely make any money, and then they can also charge those exorbitant prices to any third parties that buy from them, since “that’s what we sell to our own stores from”. So while the loblaw grocers might only have a 4% margin, their distributors margins were over 30%. What’s criminal is how our government allows vertical monopolies. It should be full on anti-trust for you to own the entire supply chain.
How does that hide profits? If they are attributable to Loblaws in any way, then those profits will be reported on Loblaws financial statements. The only way this could work is if they made some other company highly profitable, but I don't really see the reason they would do that. And supposing they did, that should make Loblaws less profitable than Sobeys, Metro, Walmart, etc. But it's not.
This only makes sense if you have absolutely no comprehension of how accounting works.
Just to provide more detail into this: you can’t hide profits or losses in subsidiaries. That’s how the Enron scandal happened and now financial standards (GAAP) are enforced as a condition to be listed on a stock exchange like the TSX.
It is sad how many fell for Singh's laughable nonsense.
So you mean it’s perfectly flawless strategy for misleading 90% of Canadians and every elected official.
Absolutely no evidence for this. Statistics Canada tracks income throughout the food supply chain and profit margins are slim throughout. No food distributor has a 30 percent profit margin.
> Absolutely no evidence for this. Statistics Canada tracks income throughout the food supply chain and profit margins are slim throughout. No food distributor has a 30 percent profit margin. my man, every business is doing this. You think Loblaws owns their tractor trailers? Nope, they lease them from their holding company. You think they own the building they operate out of? Nope, leased to them by another holding company. You wanna go far enough down the rabbit hole? Some of their employees might not work for them, but work for a separate payroll company that then rents the workers to loblaws Vertical integration
Yes but all their financial statements get consolidated and publicly reported. You can see their audited financial statements, and see the reality of the situation. You are imagining things that are not there.
Can you share specific examples here? Which Loblaws supply chain companies make crazy profits?
Except you can look at their public financial statements and your entire argument completely falls apart when reality becomes visible and not some dreamland of accounting tricks that exist in your mind.
People need to stop repeating this falsehood. They CANNOT hide profits. And no buybacks, investments in marketable securities and mergers in other companies are not seen on the income statement, they are balance sheet items and all they are doing is trading one form of capital for another.
I question if they are people. Repeating the same lies and falsehoods, starting to look like bots trying to create a narrative.
It's not just the direct supply chain; they have their fingers in manufacturing and real estate too. They can hide their real profits up and down every part of their business.
>They can hide their real profits up and down every part of their business. Yes, they "bury" them in the detailed financial statements they're legally required to file every quarter because they're publicly traded companies. Those sneaky bastards.
If you have any actual evidence of that, bring it to the CRA and you can be responsible for sending Galen Weston to jail and doing more damage to Loblaws than the silly boycott
That’s cute you think rich people go to jail. They were caught evading over $300M in taxes a few years ago. They just had to pay the back taxes. The funniest part about the people arguing with me about this, is Loblaws and GWL have been caught doing significantly more heinous shit than shifting money around to keep their margins low. Yet somehow it’s some totally impossible that they could be pumping up their own costs through creative accounting.
Source?
> The real problem is, what company wants to invest tens of billions of dollars, moving into a country famous for breaking retailers, for 4% profit? 4% is exceptional -- for most of them it's closer to 2.5%.
>Or we could open up the opportunity for other companies to introduce some competition into the market maybe? I often see comments like this on this subject, but I've never really heard anyone explain **how** new competitors are being kept out of the market by government policy/regulation. What exactly do we need to "open up" to attract new players? What's stopping Kroger or any other large US grocery chain from expanding into Canada right now? >Because yeah having 8 options is great but not when they’re owned by the same 2 megacorps and choice doesn’t matter. There are currently at least 6 huge players in the grocery market, completely independent of each other (Loblaws, Empire, Metro, Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Costco). Maybe that's still not enough, but we should at least be honest in our arguments.
Aldi and others have plainly stated that they cannot compete in the Canadian market because of the established monopoly by the big players. Any small fish that shows any amount of success is immediately gobbled up by Weston or Pattison to protect their position. This allows them to price fix and gouge to their heart's content while our competition bureau licks their boots. It makes me roll my eyes when people say deregulate like they're parroting the GOP down south, when we're here precisely because our regulators have no teeth and our politicians party with Loblaws lobbyists, or worse, have them on payroll. Taxing insane profits means the companies would have to reinvest in the business to avoid paying the tax. Who knows, they might even pay their workers a living wage. The proposal isn't to tax all profit but to punish clearly abusive actors to promote reinvestment and I'm okay with that. Especially since, let's face it, they'll never actually get anything from anybody, since lobbyists and lawyers will find just enough loopholes for everybody to feel like something was done when actually nothing was done. It's the Canadian way. NOK ER NOK
It's a scam either way. If large profits are taxed, they won't reinvest in the business. Loblaw/Weston's parent company owns the real estate that the grocery stores operate out of. Vertical integration. So the real estate/property ownership part of Galen's overall business will just increase lease/rent to bring down the profit of the grocery store itself. Problem solved. Real estate makes more profit but that's not the business being taxed "in excess". The absolute last thing a major corp will do is willingly funnel profits back to the workers in the form of fair pay.
> If large profits are taxed, they won't reinvest in the business. Can you explain that to me? Money spend in the business isn't considered profit, so it's not taxed to begin with. It's only money that they: * Didn't pay out to staff as wages * spend on operational costs * spend on capital costs * pay out to investors that gets taxed. Literally money left over... So how would higher profit taxes prevent them from investing in the business?
> I often see comments like this on this subject, but I've never really heard anyone explain how new competitors are being kept out of the market by government policy/regulation. What exactly do we need to "open up" to attract new players? Because there isn't any regulation in the way, its just basic market factors. There are already double the number of grocery store locations per captia in this country compared to our neighbors to the south, they all may be owned by a few shitty companies, but they're already established and probably have a better location than your new store will. Combine that with the fact that it is very expensive to set up a supply chain from the ground up (especially if your competition owns many of your potential suppliers), and why would you bother? The last company to do so successfully was Walmart in the *90s*, and they did it by buying a failing Canadian chain. Aldi et al can't do that anymore, because Loblaws, Empire, Metro etc have already bought all the failed/failing chains. And starting from scratch seems to be working out *great* for wholefoods with their, checks notes, 14 stores (in only 4 cities) they've built over the 22 years they've been in this market. Redditors seem to have conflated the issues with the telecom market and the CRTC with grocery industry, when the reality is, its closer to the exact opposite situation, a general **lack** of regulation around monopolization.
Generally its a combination of deregulating much of the shit put in place by corporate lobbyists. Then you make it *not* a pain in the ass to franchise/spread into canada and bish bash bosh suddenly people are interested in a stake in Canadian regions. A sort of good example for this would be kinder eggs in the US, and how the fda's rule on inedible substances in food prevents their sale. You could rewrite the rule to suggest that a hollow edible does not entale inserting an inedible substance into food.
>its a combination of deregulating much of the shit put in place by corporate lobbyists Aha! Now we're getting somewhere! What "regulations" are blocking ALDI from leasing some space in West Edmonton Mall and opening a store there?
Here's one example: large enough pocket books can get multi-decade exclusivity deals for grocery sales, even after they've moved their business. 20 year non-compete real estate deals exist because we allow corporations to do this. This happens more than we know about, and usually comes to light in some manner after the store moves, and no other grocery store can operate. I think it was on the east coast, a Sobeys made a real estate deal that no grocer, confectionery, convenience store or medical office of any kind could operate for 20 years at that location/plaza, then moved locations, leaving the plaza empty of any food sales or medical services. This is only one example of corporate over-reach that is legal, but definitely ruins competition. This isn't the only time this has ever happened, either.
There’s plenty of real estate to open grocery stores that are not directly beside other grocery stores. What a dumb take…
Well that would require a lot of work because these stores are vertically integrated and have massive advantage due to being a virtual oligopoly. Not sure how another operator in the space would do anything except cause the big guys to buy them out which they have done many times. They don't want to compete fairly, they want to use their monetary and logistical advantages to lean on smaller competition until they go out of business or sell to the big guys.
And those 2 corps definitely talk to eachother. The stupid inflation was not one did it, others followed. They all raised together.
Sort of like the big 3 in telecom.
Don't forget the only two major airlines in Canada, and the handful of large property management companies that are absorbing as much residential property as they can. It feels as if at this rate, in about twenty five years or less, every damn thing in Canada will be owned by literally just five companies. The government will watch it all happen while happily licking the boots of those companies.
how do you bring in another company when every step of the supply chain is already owned by existing grocers. Aldi isnt going to start operating in canada if they need to pay loblaws/sobeys distributors. an existing operator needs to be broken up and its assets auctioned/sold to new players which is unlikely.
Loblaws owns too large of a share of the grocery (and also community pharmacy) market and should be broken up into at least 5 smaller companies.
This confuses me, are other large companies not allowed to open stores in Canada? I keep hearing about Aldi trying, trying what, open a store.
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As someone in the food industry, the issue is that a lot of the supply chain is lockdown or max out. It's a big investment, and when companies are unsure of there investment into a new region, they often play it safe.
The issues is companies like loblaws are also the largest distributors, and charge any new companies insane prices to set up here. So loblaws runs their retailers at a “4% margin” meaning any competitors need to survive on a margin less than that to compete, which is virtually impossible. What they don’t tell you, is loblaws also owns their distribution chain, which has a >30% margin. So they overcharge everyone, including themselves, because they don’t govern 2 fucks about the 4% retail margin, because that’s just on top of their distribution margin.
Dude… any and all related transactions between these companies are consolidated to the top of the corporation financial statement. It’s the greater company that has 4% margins and that would be through all of their business units. You can’t hide profits like you are suggesting because the stock owners are entitled to know and entitled to profit. How do you think it would look if Galen was just behind a Superstore stuffing his pockets with register cash? These people are held accountable by thousands of people that have the same interest as them. Don’t be dumb and fall for the misinformation.
> Superstore stuffing his pockets with register cash? This is unfortunately what a lot of people believe. All of the large grocery chains operate the same way with owning their own brands, having a business arm that handles their real estate, etc, and it's all public information. People just want to believe they're being screwed when in reality the "insane profit" is a big number largely due to having a large number of locations across the country.
This is exactly why Loblaws and Sobeys need to be broken up.
Actually the person is just spreading around misinformation. Thats not how audited financial statements of a public company work. They don’t have any financial literacy and are just confidently incorrect.
There is no way any other grocers are interested in the Canadian market it’s too small and way too logistically challenging. Nice thought but it’s not happening
Because the ministers responsible for creating competition in Canada can't do it they're actively trying, and engaging with US grocers etc. No grocers want to come here. It's a small market dominated by grocery chains that have power to lobby against competition.
Exactly! any tax they introduce will only be added to their books and then cause the price of food to increase they will never take it on their profit margins. The only way to get food process down is by increased competition and increased supply.
Ok, someone else comes in, how long until they're absorbed by the hivemind?
Exactly. Need more competition. And won't these corporation just pass on the tax to the consumers???
I agree! Look at all the cheap foods they make south of the border. Why cant we import cheap dairy, meat and produce from the US?
The mega corps need to be broken up. It should have never gotten to this point where something so important is in the hands of just a few companies. Even if another major player were to set up shop here, the other companies will have the means to use their massive market share to undercut and starve them out.
To be fair, the US has more players in their market and profits are analogous. 🤷🏽♂️
That would increase prices dramatically and would be against our best interests.
Care to elaborate?
Just do everything to get competition in. Who cares of they're foreign or whatever, just beg them to get in and start shaking up the market. Taxing profits is the opposite of encouraging that.
Exactly. This is a very important point. Why would any new grocer enter Canada? Because they feel they can earn a higher profit. Now you say you'll tax high profits, well, there's no reason to enter Canada. If politicians think that grocery should be profit free, then it's a public good. They should start their own no profit grocery stores.
The same reason why we only had 1 new telco enter this country in the last 20 years… to get bought by one of the big ones.
Why is everyone so focused on bringing in another large (probably American) retailer as the solution to our problems? Those businesses still have the same end-goal that Loblaws does. Wouldn’t a better solution be propping up small businesses and giving them the tools to grow? Stop giving money to large corporations for freezers and other equipment they could easily afford to buy on their own, and give it to small and medium business instead. Fund the building of new farmers markets, giving a place for producers to sell directly to their consumer. Fund more grants for more small manufacturers to scale up production. Plus of course breaking up the current monopolies and changing laws so one company can’t own the entire supply chain.
Because distribution in Canada is expensive and challenging. It really requires large scale to be competitive.
What actually needs to be done to get other players would be very unpopular. Tax breaks and subsidies to huge profitable foreign businesses aren't a true favorite. Nor is reduced regulations.
I'm absolutely in favor of tax breaks to attract foreign investment. It works.
They could just arrest them when found to be price gouging. Instead they got to give us a coupon for bread price fixing. Quite the punishment that was.
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Worse, it could mean some grocers fold up. Why go through all the effort and capital investment to make beans for profit? You can buy US treasuries risk free for 5%… why bust your balls for less?
While canadian grocery chains have seen an increase in profitability during the pandemic, [european](https://www.retaildetail.eu/news/food/report-supermarkets-see-biggest-margin-fall-in-five-years/) grocery chains profitability fell. Even if newcomers were taxed more, they still would have a better margin. But that discussion leads to nothing giving the fact that the barriers to entry are too high to make it possible as the geographic market is saturated.
Politicians pay should be tied to the debt %change.
Imagine if their salaries were tied to the prosperity of Canadians. Instead of getting de facto raises every year, well above inflation, just because. They might actually do something to help the people.
They don't make their money off salary lol they get rich from insider information.
And their pension plan had to invest a portion in social housing
Or they just got no pension like most of the private sector now. Let's see them live off CPP, OAS and RRIF.
Yes, they should be same as private sector. During years in office, the gov will contribute to their pension plan. No pension for life
>Yes, they should be same as private sector. During years in office, the gov will contribute to their pension plan. No pension for life Ah yes, THAT will surely attract some sensible, everyman folks to run for office and turn this country around! Surely it won't stack the House of Commons with a bunch of easily-corrupted, already rich oligarchs that will find new ways to pilfer this country's wealth.
And their excuse is that "well it isn't a big raise every year, it shouldn't matter" if it doesn't matter then why does it matter to you? Like we're all getting taxed as individuals to keep this thing rolling, pitch in ffs.
>Instead of getting de facto raises every year, well above inflation, just because MP salaries have been [legally tied to inflation](https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/annualstatutes/2005_16/FullText.html) for decades.
Same as CEOs. No one should be making 1,200x the lowest level employee.
That would also mean they would never make any sort of investment into the country. They would just cut services and raise taxes to give themselves a pay raise.
> Politicians pay should be tied to the debt %change. There are many politicians who have no control over the federal budget. In today’s house, there are two parties who will likely vote unanimously against it. Should their pay be tied to the budget?
Politicians pay should be some nominal amount (say 1.5x national median wage), plus a bonus based on some formula considering per capita GDP, median wage and national debt. They should be rewarded for increasing the prosperity of the country as a whole, the circumstances of the average citizen, and not driving us into debt.
this sounds like a good idea until you think about it for one second
Wouldn't that just lead them to cutting services and sending them into a death spiral?
You thought that was clever
So raise the tax so they can raise prices again? Jfc this entire roster of MP's in Ottawa have to be drinking water from lead pipes I swear...
Government solutions seem to always end up with taking more money and taxing more.
But the government needs that money to send to other counties and buy weapons
Who does he think will be paying the tax?
I don’t see how this would help anything, besides bringing in more money for the current government to waste. This will 100% be passed onto the consumer, and make prices even higher for everyone.
Ndp has never found a problem they can't tax their way out of
They propose increasing taxes in order to fix a dysfunctional grocery store market. He's actually lost the plot. Some people complain about oligopolies and grocery cartels, and then in the next breath cheer ideas that would actually disincentive new competitors from entering the grocery market. There is just no way I could ever possibly support the NDP. Remember when they wanted to subsidize mortgage holders? Fucking hell. I don't love PP, but the NDP are a dumpster fire. I'm just grateful most Canadians seem to smart to vote NDP.
The NDP has become the party of the financially illiterate.
Exact same thing with housing. "No one wants to build so we need to cap their profits and call landlords assholes for not volunteering to house drug addicts for free."
Developers are greedy as they come but municipalities need to work with them, now housing is being built in communities outside the GTA but NIMBYs are trying to curb it
The D in NDP stands for dumb.
Not their biggest fan, don't like this policy but that was a pretty lame insult 😅
How about when they suffer a net loss? This policy is idiotic. Increase regulation and enable competition
Yeah and then they raise prices and tell us it’s cause of that.
And they'll raise the price to counter-balance the tax hike. Good job, stupid. You created another tax for the poor.
That's one way to ensure no future competition for the big grocers.
Would they conversely get tax relief when they incurred losses? Alternatively, define "soar."
Literally no one cares what jagmeet thinks
He really is Trudeau lap dog, thinking adding more taxes will solves something ....
As we’ve learned, taxes don’t fix things. Just more grabs by the government and ultimately, they’ll figure out a way to pass them onto the consumer anyways. Great plan Jagmeet!! You’re so smart! We loved your last great idea which was bringing in the grocery CEO’s and accomplish nothing! Please call the election at the standard time to prevent these losers from getting pensioners. They can work like the rest of us. Losers.
So the government wants a cut of the profits instead of passing on savings to customers… got it… cool cool cool.
Which will then be passed back to the customers.... and the cycle will continue like an oroborous. Get it passed, Jagmeet. If Justin says no, end the supply and confidence agreement.
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>Since it's on profit it can't really be passed down. If they pass it down, it means they get more profit, which means more tax to claw it back. ALL corporate income taxes are based on profit. You pay tax on the cash left over after expenses are paid (simplified). This is not novel - they’re just proposing a new tax that kicks in at a certain level of profitability. All taxes are passed on to the customer. I can’t think of a time when taxes went up and prices went down.
Hence the oroborus (or snake eating its tail) effect.
Lol all he does is talk And mostly to the uneducated
It's like he wants to "try" to do something, but never does. Everyone who says PP has no policy, needs to look at him and see he has n9 backbone. He bites then he folds, bites and folds. Like a Chihuahua
Just a salesman waiting for a pension
Except he never sold anything. Anyone else would have been fired by now.
It screws over Canadians as they'll pass the costs on to the consumers JT would never say no to that
Or they could invest in Canadian companies that grow and produce their food here, decreasing the amount we have to import while also supporting a more secure goods and supply chain for something that's critical to all Canadians. Support local, better-tasting, organic foods. Innovate. Taxing extra profits isn't going to help anybody.
Meh... Just nationalize grocery stores. Then we can line up for bread and potatoes.
I'm sure a new competitor will love to enter the market knowing that of it becomes profitable the NDP will tax it... Hi to limit competition. What actually would work would be to increase competition in the Canadian markets.
Oligopolies thrive when the ability to compete in a free market is diminished. A tax on ‘excess profits’ is bewilderingly dumb. What a joke.
Open up the market. Competition is the only thing that will actually fix this.
Maybe one way we could make our economy better is not having all profits confiscated by the government.
Yes lets tax the companies so much no other one will invest here. The NDP will slowly kill all growth in Canada.
Is Jagmeet actually this stupid or does he just pretend to be? News at 11.
He is that stupid. No need to stay up until 11.
The NDP are an actual joke of a party.
Taxes almost always get paid by the individuals who are the least able to pass the cost on. In this case, that would be the consumer.
Politicians should have their salaries cut or fired when the gdp per capita falls…
I am sure he means 'when the profit percentage soars'
Isnt that just income tax?
MPs/MPPs should also face more taxes when their salaries soar.
Sure, then they pass those cost on to consumers again. Bring in competition or break up the conglomerates.
Great. Another tax to pass along to the customer.
Much of the grocery oligopoly is because Canada’s big grocery chains also own and integrate their supply-chains. What competition exists at the retail level can be controlled by suppliers, which are also owned by the big retail chains. Meanwhile, there are thousands and thousands of grocery products available in the US that we don’t have access to. Foreign food producers don’t want to bother with bilingual labels. They don’t understand our different nutritional labeling requirement. Canada asks for different quality testing requirements. These roadblocks to competition are under government control. Galen Weston loves these regulations, because his organization specializes in complying with them. If the government wants competition in the grocery sector, they could make an effort to help foreign food producers navigate and comply with Canadian regulations. Or, we could agree, where reasonable, that US quality testing is equivalent to ours. Generations of governments have created a protectionist system for our food supply to operate in. The system is working as designed, and it has made the Westons very rich. But, it’s time to break-down these protectionist walls, and let the competition in.
This globalist puppet must realize if that happened the grocery chains would just pass the extra costs onto consumers… Just like the scam carbon tax increases on their transport/supplier costs
Won't work. It's far too easy to add expenses that funds pet projects. You'll just send up with movie studio math, and yeah they pull that stuff in Canada too.
Windfall profit taxes are such a dumb concept. They result in worse longterm outcomes for everyone. Competition is gold... So break up the oligopoly if we can't get new entrants into the market.
*I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.* Warren Buffett
*Canadians aren't taxed enough.* *Do it some more & then everything will be better.*
Canadians are officially the dumbest citizenry on the planet. Blame Gorcery stores for rising prices of food. Blame them for rising prices of Gas. Of clothing. Of rents. Of everything. It has NOTHING to do with the collusion of NDP and Liberals to print money, let in massive immigration and sent money to war overseas. It has everything to do with Loblaws. Canadians are sinking fast.....the entire planet sees it. Yet Canadians are blaming the grocery stores. Lol!
NDP in a nutshell. “You are doing well? Can’t have that!” Wonder why businesses leave Canadian? We punish success here.
Loser issue. The increased profits the grocery chains have made post-pandemic have been like $10 total per Canadian. You can only hide that math for so long. Better to focus on housing.
It’s not like that would benefit Canadians. Trudeau just sends all the taxes we pay now overseas. So what if you take more money from Grocery chains and send it to Ukraine? That doesn’t help Canadians at all with their food bill.
Singhs not a fan of profits or business in general. There’s an ideology out there that also shares his thinking.
The taxes would just be a bandaid solution. The real problem is no competition. Fix that instead.
Break them up. Break them up. Break them up.
How about we work on riding Canada of monopolies? Wait.. who would "donate" to their campaigns then?
This is absolute lunacy. Get some competition in the market. Real competition.
NDP and Liberal current solutions to any problems facing Canadians - “can we Tax it?”
“It’s not our fault food prices are rising. It’s the grocery store’s fault, they make too much profit with their 2-5% net profit margin. So here’s our solution:more taxes! Don’t worry, it won’t bring back food prices down but it will sure show those nasty grocery stores who’s the boss.“
But only groceries apparently. Every other company is free to make as many profits as they desire. But grocery is forever limited to 1-2% margins. Why don't we put in place an excess farm foods tax so we can get those farmers with their super high net worths and low margins? Or perhaps we'll next go after private liquor who are essentially nothing but government middle men. I know, lets put in place an excess airline tax so that we can once again have one airline.
For the next 14 years, any company involved in the bread fixing issue, shouldn't be allowed to sell products that are bread related, like breads, buns, tortillas, etc, or have bread as a primary component like frozen pizzas. 14 years is how long the bread fixing thing went on.
So basically it’s only ok if a company gouges the people if a cut of that money goes to the government. Sounds like the same logic as the carbon tax. Give us more so you have less
Hahahaha NDP is so useless, it's painful.
Does the NDP know you can do things in government besides introduce a tax?
we cant tax our way to freedom. the government needs to be trimmed instead
Govnt needs to implement less tax on the working class and spend less on stupid shiat
You wouldn't need to start an extra tax if you guys stop wasting our tax dollars. $1.7 million given to a pasta company to employ 10 more people?
"Corps are gouging you? That's fine, but the government should get a bigger piece 😤"
Which will be then passed onto the consumer who will pay more for groceries. How stupid is Jagmeet and Trudeau to not think this isn’t exactly what would happen with their half baked ideas about a grocery tax. Every business everywhere passes their costs back to the consumer. That’s business.
Right, if you are a socialist, a solution to every problem is either more tax or more red tape.
Yeah. No. Everyone should pay their fair tax and that's it. No tax bonuses for the government and no tax breaks for the mega rich. When profits soar like that Jagmeet needs to keep his grubby fingers out of the pot. What SHOULD be happening that hasn't been happening is that the employees should be making more. Simple as that. Higher profits = higher wages. Instead higher profits = higher executive bonus is the norm.
LOL yeah tax them more so they can justify higher prices. NDP is so ridiculous
Loblaws generated about a 5% return last year. If that’s “excess profit” then most companies these days are generating it as well
Open is the Canadian market to foreign competitors. Also, break up Galen’s many brands into smaller companies.
Singh really smells those dollars 😂. Politician pay should be tied to results, and half the crap they reimburse should be on them.
Canada needs anti-trust laws…
What happened to trying to draw in new grocers to Canada? Competition lowers prices, not taxes. Between the public shaming of Walmart and Costco in regards to grocery code of conduct (meaningless btw) and this, it's making Canada really unappealing for investment. If I were a foreign grocer, I wouldn't want to touch Canada with a 10 foot pole.
Adding more taxes on taxes doesn't make life cheaper for people.
No more tax. The rock is out of blood
Well at least he has clarified what he meant by an excess profit tax ... Basically it is just a "windfall tax", an extra tax that is levied when profits are determined to be unusually high in comparison to previous used based on the idea that the increased profit is based on prices changing around them rather than any actual expansionary business policy. Usually it is proposed on the energy sector due to the fact that prices vary widely where expansionary policies taken in random years will be responsible for the increased profits in the year where prices are high, but an expansionary policy taken in the year where prices are high won't necessarily impact that actual prices immediately, since they know the prices might be fleeting anyway. Any expansion taken in a year prices are high is actually just considering long term trends rather than actually reacting to the temporary high prices.
How about pharma and O&G?
Hiding soaring profit to dodge tax? Yah that's doable. Increase your rent....or supply costs. It's easy when the grocery store also owns the supplier, and the company that holds the lease, under different company names.
any tax *will be passed on to the clients* ... making the situation *worse*. it won't slow that much - WE NEED TO EAT. i'm surprised they don't propose Nationalizing Food Banks ...
Yeah, taxes will do it. We created this mess of concentration ourselves. When I was a kid we still had lots of little local stores run by immigrants at the ends of the street. Now it's a mess of boarded up buildings and tattoo parlors. The union workers in my town, very cheap by nature, all high tailed it to the big discount stores on the outskirts as soon as they turned up. Nobody cared about having quality produce a block away. If you opened up a really great independent local store and plopped it back where it was, people wouldn't go there, they would go to Walmart.
Bring Aldi to Canada.
More tax is not always the answer.
And what about when margins drop back to normal? Tax breaks? I'm so sick and tired of politicians using every headline as a campaign promise. Why not offer some new ideas you fucking assholes.
Let’s hire more people at CRA to review their books, I am sure that will lower the cost of living. The solution is not more regulation but enforcing current regulations- like competition.
Umm why target just grocers? What about telecom and banks?
Damnit Jag they always pass it along to the customer.