The Hunger Games

Before one begins, some things need to be explained and clarified.

Canada has dairy and wheat boards that regulate amounts and prices of their respective goods.

The carbon taxes, based on the unproven theory that carbon is a pollutant and ostensibly designed and passed to change the behaviour of Canadians so that they don't heat their homes or fuel their cars, only make goods and services for average Canadians more expensive and farm products and costs likewise more expensive, to the point where they are untenable. Even more troubling, the government wants to stop farms from using nitrogen that would aid in growing mass crops.

The cost of living in Canada has increased. The majority of the average Canadian's household's income is taxes. Low-income families are more negatively affected by these taxes. High taxes and costs on food, gas and rent (coupled with the lessened amount of available and affordable apartments and houses) have made it so that individuals and families can no longer manage.

The stultifying waste of money is further contributing to the already existing high spending the government is doing.

And that leads us up to today.

King Louis XVI Justin has decided to wear the big boy pants and fix these problems before the Canadian hungry man becomes the Canadian angry man.

Because he can just do that.

Of course it is not more than a ploy to prevent any sort of mass reaction from the public, it is not not even remotely too little and it overlooks the high taxation and inflation for which Justin is directly responsible but it deflection is what he does best:

The federal government is demanding major Canadian grocers come up with a plan to stabilize prices, drawing pushback from the food industry.

(Sidebar: because that can just happen. It's like prices are arbitrarily decided.) 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday said the call comes as Canadians continue to struggle with inflation.

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“Large grocery chains are making record profits. Those profits should not be made on the backs of people who are struggling to feed their families,” he said, speaking in London, Ont., following a caucus retreat.

(Sidebar: there are no grossly huge profits for supermarkets and this was never mentioned when Justin locked down the entire country save grocery stores. He certainly didn't mind offering the Westons $12 million for refrigerators. Not a singe mention of his taxes on fuel or inflation. Interesting.)

Oh, there's more:

Trudeau pledged on Thursday to give the Competition Bureau more power to force companies to hand over information for investigations, and to act against firms that are trying to co-operate with each other in ways that “stifle competition and consumer choice.” It’s a response to months of sinking poll numbers that show many Canadians blame the government for inflation.

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The changes would give the Competition Bureau the power to compel information from companies so it can produce effective market studies and “empower the Bureau to take action” if it believes companies have collaborated to stifle competition, if large stores prevent smaller competitors from operating nearby, for example.

The Liberal government said it would also remove the “efficiencies” defence in the Competition Act. That allows competitors to defend a merger against anticompetitive claims that it reduces competition as long as they can show it creates market efficiencies.

This is the government starting to take over not only food production but its distribution, as well.

The Soviets have great experience with that:

 

The Soviet Union found itself torn between its former centralized, command economy and aspects of an emerging free-market economy. The confusion led to supply shortages and economic tensions. Suddenly, many commodities, such as paper, petrol and tobacco, were in short supply. Bare shelves in grocery stores were once again a familiar sight. In 1990, Muscovites queued for bread – the first breadlines seen in the capital for several years. Rationing was introduced for certain goods.

Along with the economic consequences of perestroika came political repercussions. The turmoil exacerbated nationalist sentiment amongst constituents of the USSR, diminishing Moscow’s hold over members of the Soviet Union. Calls for increased political reform and decentralization grew. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

The Soviets also had experience with an arrogant autocrat who had no idea what he was doing:

Others carried out the Lysenko directives too precisely and thus exposed their absurdity. (In 1934 Pskov agronomists sowed flax on the snow—exactly as Lysenko had ordered. The seeds swelled up, grew moldy, and died. The big fields lay empty for a year. Lysenko could not say that the snow was a kulak or that he himself was an ass. He accused the agronomists of being kulaks and of distorting his technology. And the agronomists went off to Siberia.)

Needless to say, not many are jazzed by Justin's attempt to pull his weight:

Michael von Massow, a food economist with the University of Guelph, told Global News that his “cynical” view of the grocer summit is that it’s a “vague” and “disingenuous” proposal to give the appearance of action on food prices.

“We’re seeing this government get hammered about affordability,” he said.

“It appears to be something to take heat off of them, rather than something that will really fundamentally affect affordability for Canadians.”

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cares so much about how the cost of food is affecting Canadians, he is threatening to bring in policies that will either raise grocery bills even more, or bring about shortages — or both. Remember spring 2020, with the empty shelves and lineups to get into the Superstore? Trudeau apparently does, and with fondness.

Whenever the Liberals are asked about inflation and whether they will rein in the spending habits that are contributing to rising prices, a point that is undisputed by virtually anyone with credibility, their response has been to deflect. The stock answer is to point to “global” inflation, international supply chain problems and the war in Ukraine. This answer is no doubt true, but doesn’t absolve the Liberals from their own inflationary policies, or the Bank of Canada, for that matter, from having taken much too long to raise interest rates.

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This appeal to inflation’s complexity evaporates, however, when it’s convenient for the prime minister, as it was on Thursday. Suddenly, the intricate problems facing the global economy are not responsible for higher prices at all. According to Trudeau, the real culprits are grocery stores, which are somehow using inflation as a cover for their wanton greed — greed that mysteriously only manifested itself in 2020 when prices started soaring.

Trudeau said at an event in London, Ont. that, “large grocery chains are making record profits,” a point that is perhaps true if looking only at the absolute dollar value of profits, or only considering non-grocery aspects of the business, but is otherwise something approximating gibberish. For instance, according to its most recent quarterly report, Loblaw’s profit margins on food sales are declining, same as they were last year.

The prime minister went on to say that, “Those profits should not be made on the backs of people who are struggling to feed their families,” a statement that only makes sense if the goal is to eliminate profit altogether, which increasingly seems to be the plan.

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If the five largest grocery chains — Loblaw, Metro, Empire, Walmart and Costco — don’t come up with a plan to get prices under control by Thanksgiving, the government “will take further action,” Trudeau threatened. “We are not ruling anything out, including tax measures.”

It is notable that these threats are not being levied at businesses further down the supply chain, such as truck drivers, food processors and farmers, all of which are experiencing higher costs of doing business, and in turn passing those costs on down the line. The grocery stores are obviously the most visible. Singling them out as the cause of inflation is performative in the typical Liberal way.

As for the reasoning behind the specific threat of “tax measures,” perhaps the prime minister has merely grown so tired of running a government that is tottering on the edge of implosion, that he wants to start telling private companies what to do. Or maybe he is just so accustomed to using the levers of state, where the profit motive is non-existent, that he can’t imagine a private business operates differently.

If Justin gets his way, the availability of food will be more of an issue than the costs of it.