Monopolies driving up food prices

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2023 (930 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ANYONE venturing out to the grocery store must admit, it’s torture.

Vast amounts of healthy, colourful food might as well be behind unbreakable glass, given the prices on each item.

The Canadian Food Price Report forecast Canadian families will pay $1,065 more for food in 2023. This, on top of the previous year that saw a five to seven per cent increase of food prices, depending on where you live in our great nation.

Everyone is having to pay more for groceries, but Canadians with limited incomes are hit the hardest.

Affordability and access go hand in hand. Many Canadians rely on the marketplace to access food and our incomes are a factor to our access. Primarily, we generate income through our labour. Therefore, high food prices are a labour issue.

High prices block our access to healthy food, which coerces us to work longer and harder, if possible, to overcome this barrier.

It gouges the savings of our retired workers, who put many decades of their labour into our economy, and forces families to make hard decisions at the grocery store. It also undermines the minimum-wage increases recently won by workers in this country.

It’s been four years since Canada announced a federal food policy. So why has our access not improved? The Canadian Food Policy investments and initiatives have addressed many issues that plague our food system. However, it fails to address the root cause: lack of competition. We as Canadians are experiencing the effects of corporate power over the food system.

The theme at the 2022 National Convention for The National Farmers Union Canada focused on the lack of competition in the food system — caused by corporations buying up their competitors through mergers — and what it means for Canadians.

A lack of competition can be measured using concentration ratios. Known as CR4, this is like a thermometer for the economy. It measures the percentage of market share controlled by a specific number of firms and states a limit of four firms with 40 per cent before market concentration occurs.

In a concentrated food system, food corporations gain more market power. This gives them the uncontested ability to decide the price to pay suppliers and the prices consumers pay.

York University’s evaluation of the corporate concentration in the Canadian food system shows many sectors exceed the limit of 40 per cent: fertilizer sector CR4 = 94 per cent; hog packing CR4 = 71 per cent; and food retail market CR4 = 72 per cent, just to name a few.

Why should Canadians care about these rates? Look at your recent grocery bills and compare the shrinking number of nutritious food items you got for the price you paid. That’s why.

In 1976, the Canadian government signed the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Culture Rights, which includes the rights to food. Therefore, the Canadian government has a legal obligation to us, its citizens, to develop a food environment based on availability, accessibility and adequacy.

This must include a counterattack to corporate takeover of the Canadian food system. Allowing the concentration of our food system to reach well past 40 per cent violates Canadians’ rights to food.

Toothless legislation such as Canada’s Competition Act helps to establish the power corporations have over our access to food.

The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP) highlights that over the past six years, 16,000 mergers occurred, with less than one per cent seeing intervention by the Canadian Competition Bureau. Canada’s close ties with the United States’ food system does not render us powerless.

It’s time for reform of Canada’s Competition Act. It is time for Canadians to fight for their food system currently under seige by corporate monopoly.

The federal government is asking individuals and groups to share their views regarding Canada’s Competition Act until March 31 by completing their survey — the Future of Competition Policy in Canada (wfp.to/competition). The feedback you give by completing this survey will help to inform potential changes to Canada’s Competition Act.

Until reforms are implemented to the act, there will be continued corporate takeover of Canada’s food system, resulting in ongoing food-price increases. Forcing Canadian labourers to work harder to maintain access to a balanced diet, or else, surrenders their rights to healthy food.

Canadian labourers must use their voices to demand a democratic food system, so they have more freedom with the income they worked so hard for.

To learn more, visit the Future of Competition Policy website, Food Secure Canada and the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP).

Zoe St. Aubin is a freelance research consultant based in Winnipeg.