The Elephants In the Room Are Food Boards, Inflation and High Taxes

But do carry on with the distraction from the current government's disastrous handling of things:

Each year, from late October to early February, the Canadian grocery industry engages in something known as the blackout period. During this time prices for specific national and private brand products are frozen.

During this period, suppliers demand more money for products to keep up with inflation, global supply chain issues, energy costs and international conflicts. When the price freeze ends, the backlog of price increase requests by suppliers catches up.

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In a virtual conference, Metro CEO Eric La Flèche discussed the price freeze, pricing demands from suppliers and how consumers should expect to see price increases in February.

“Our teams have negotiated actively with our suppliers, mostly on the CPG (consumer packaged goods) side. The number of requests (for price increases by suppliers) is down pretty substantially from the highs of last year and the year before, that’s good news. The size of the demands is coming back to more normal levels. It can be too high in certain instances, so we are negotiating hard to bring it down,” La Flèche said to the media during the conference on Tuesday.

A Metro spokesperson, in an email to National Post, stated that it is the company’s practice to not accept price increases from suppliers on “prices for all private label and national brand dry, dairy and frozen goods, with the exception of commodity products such as sugar and coffee,” during the blackout period, which, this year is Oct. 30 to Feb. 4.

Canadian grocers are coming out of the price freeze as Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says that he is contacting international grocers to inject more competition into the Canadian grocery industry.

The very twit who had his mortgage with a Chinese bank is toying with the idea of opening up the Canadian market.

It will never happen, course.

Even if the food boards and monopolies were willing to further divide the proverbial pie, who would do business in Canada, the land of high taxes, over-regulation and government cheats?

It's all bull.